Where do the figures come from?

From a primary published page: a company filing and its coverage, a platform terms or developer page, a court docket, an official administration page, or a public job posting. Each figure on this site carries the publisher, the link and the date the desk read it.

What happens to a figure that cannot be sourced?

It is not printed. The desk does not round, estimate or carry a number forward from another publication that does not name its own source. The gap is named instead.

Does the desk give advice?

No. It documents what platforms, regulators, courts and official pages have published, with dates. It does not recommend tools, does not rank by opinion and does not state whether a practice is allowed on any platform.

Methodology: how this desk sources and dates a figure

The rule

Every number on this site carries three things: the value, a link to the page that published it, and the date the desk last read that page. If any of the three is missing, the number is not printed. There is no fourth option where a figure is printed with a hedge. Where a number does not exist publicly, the entry says so.

Source order

The desk prefers sources in this order, and says which one it used.

The primary document. A company filing, a platform's own terms or developer documentation, a court docket entry, an official administration page, a regulator's page, a job posting as published.
Named reporting on a primary document. Used where the primary document is behind a registry paywall or is not published at all. The desk names the outlet, the article and its date, and says that the figure comes from the reporting rather than from the filing itself.
An archived copy. Used where a page has changed and the earlier wording matters. The desk gives the snapshot date.

Aggregators, listicles and vendor comparison pages about other vendors are not sources. They are, at most, the reason the desk went to look at a primary page.

Declarations

A company's number about its own product, its own revenue or its own users is a declaration. It is printed as one, with the company named as the source, and never as a measurement. Where two published sources disagree, both numbers are printed and the desk does not pick one.

Formats

A dispatch is a news brief of 150 to 350 words: a section kicker, a factual title, a one-sentence lede, three to five paragraphs, a source block and the desk's signature. An investigation is the long form, 800 to 1,500 words, with every archive link. A brief is one fact and one source. The figure of the day on the front page is one number from the Numbers table, with its source. The platform changelog is a standing page: an entry goes on it only when the desk can point at a page that carries the change.

Dates

Three dates can appear on an entry. Published is when the desk first put the entry on file. Updated is the last substantive change to it. Read is when the desk last opened the source pages and confirmed the figures were still there. A read date is not a promise that a figure is still true today. It is a statement that it was on the page on that day.

What the desk does not do

It does not estimate. A figure is not derived from another figure unless the page says so and shows the arithmetic. Derived values are labelled as desk calculations.
It does not publish reviews, ratings, testimonials or user counts of its own. It has not tested any product described here, and it names no AI chatting vendor: public prices for those tools live on the directory sites of the same network, linked where relevant.
It does not state that a tool or a practice is allowed, compliant or safe on any platform. It reports what the platform published and when.
It does not draw legal conclusions. An allegation in a filing is reported as an allegation, with the filing named, until a court rules.
It does not name private individuals who are not parties to a public document, and it signs nothing with a person's name.

Corrections

A correction changes the entry in place, moves the updated date, and says in the entry what changed. Nothing is quietly removed. Write to [email protected] with the page, the figure and the source you believe is right.

Conflicts of interest

Disclosure

The people behind this newspaper work in the industry it covers, which is stated on Who writes here. The desk takes no payment from any company named on it, runs no affiliate links and accepts no placement. Where a source belongs to the same network as this site, the source line says so.

Currency and arithmetic

Figures are printed in the currency the source published. Where the desk converts or computes a per-unit value, the working is shown in the entry and the result is marked as a desk calculation. Percentages published by a platform are printed as the platform wrote them, including where its own pages disagree with each other; when they do, the entry says so and links both pages.