That's actually kind of the problem here. The assumption built into this is that the company is doing the math. More likely the company is just so big that if even one mid-level person makes a bad call, the consequence gets propagated across a billion users. But there are so many mid-level people that it's guaranteed to happen.
Which is the same reason that "higher penalties" wouldn't work either. The problem is not that the penalties aren't sufficient to deter, the problem is that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, so even if the lawyers tell them "you must never do this" they've got thousands of independent chances to screw it up. One person who doesn't heed their training and oof.
The actual problem is that these companies are too big. Mistakes will always happen, but one mistake by one team in a huge bureaucracy shouldn't affect a population the size of a major country.
Let’s go nuts and just take for granted the good faith and best intentions of megacorp, against all evidence. Even then, we all know that ignorance of the law doesn’t get people out of a speeding ticket. Why should the argument from ignorance hold up then with megacorp, who is staffed with hundreds of legal compliance professionals? Better yet, why should it hold up for their nth example of systematic abuse?
I have some sympathy for the idea that these fines are a form of "stochastic taxation". There are so many rules, arbitrarily enforced and ever changing, that a large company will bleed off a billion now and then whatever you do.
I think that definitely happens, but I'd guess it's the smaller part of the equation.
Which is the same reason that "higher penalties" wouldn't work either. The problem is not that the penalties aren't sufficient to deter, the problem is that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, so even if the lawyers tell them "you must never do this" they've got thousands of independent chances to screw it up. One person who doesn't heed their training and oof.
The actual problem is that these companies are too big. Mistakes will always happen, but one mistake by one team in a huge bureaucracy shouldn't affect a population the size of a major country.