@matigo I'm probably overly credulous but I think it would work better than you're imagining. People lie to accountants now so accounting audit requirements don't mean there's zero malfeasance but generally people feel (or at least I feel) like there's broad compliance, especially at the top. I don't know anyone suggesting corporations like Facebook are diddling the numbers there.

And with accounting shenanigans we're talking about actions that can directly profit bad actors. The malfeasance you're talking about would all be for indirect (and merely potential) benefit. There's no guarantee that Facebook maintaining a secret Mongolian data warehouse would mean their advertising rates are guaranteed to be 15% higher.

The trick is you have to have penalties that essentially cripple companies that do the wrong thing (and auditors that abet them) and criminal liability that means the calculus of management is to put in place systems that ensure this won't happen.

Look, I'm almost a card-carrying member of the liberal bourgeoisie elite so of course I'd feel like this. I'm jumping on you a little because I'm currently working through this idea that an 'assume the worst' mentality is counterproductive. This is purely speculative and a bit of a tangent but I look at how Japanese companies look after their employees (relatively) and I wonder how much is due to social expectations. In Australia (and I think the West more broadly), everyone assumes corporations are out to screw one and all and I wonder if that, in a very strange way, doesn't give management licence to act that way because it's what everyone expects.

@matigo I guess I see it less about companies respecting their users and more about acting in their own self-interest to avoid the hypothetical penalties that would apply to non-compliance.