I know this sounds heretical, but companies generally do not go against what they say they are doing. They might use clever language or do slimey things, but it's very rare that they will say "We do not do xyz" while they are in fact doing xyz. Especially for big companies.
Reputation has far more value than whatever they gain by lying. Besides, they can just say "We do xyz" because <1% of users read the TOS and less than <0.1% care enough to not use the service.
> Also Google: "Let's do all the evil things..." ~ heavily "paraphrased" ;)
My "tongue-in-cheek point" is that it seems like corporations beyond a certain point of "filthy-richness" just do as they please, and say what they please, and mostly neither thing has to agree with the other, nor does either one need affect their profits "bottom line" all that seriously much. Most of your typical "mega-corps" are really only able to be affected much by the laws and legal system, which they've been increasingly "capturing" in various ways so that happens very rarely anymore these days, and when it does it's most often a "slap on the wrist" and "don't do that!" sorta thing, followed by more business-as-usual.
You know the old worry about the "paperclip production maximizer AI" eating everything to create paperclips? That's kinda where we're pretty-much already at with mega-corps. They're so utterly laser-focused on maximizing to extract every last dime of profit out of everything that they're gonna end up literally consuming all matter in the universe if they don't just destroy us all in the process of trying to get there.
I mean from a non-subjective legal TOS perspective.
I'm not arguing that the grocery store saying "fresh produce" guarantees that the produce is fresh. Fresh, like evil, is subjective.
I'm saying that if the grocery puts "All our produce is no older than 10 days" you can be pretty sure they adhere to that and train employees to follow it. "10 days" is not subjective.
Big companies not only lie, some of them do so routinely, including breaking the law. Look at the banking industry: Wells Fargo fraudulent / fake account scandal, JPMorgan Chase UST and precious metals future fraud. Standard Charter bank caught money laundering for Iran, twice. Deutsche Bank caught laundering for Russia, twice. UBS laundering and tax evasion. Credit Suisse caught laundering for Iran. And so on.
Really it comes down to what a company believes it can get away with, and what the consequences will be. If there are minimal consequences they'd be dumb not to try.
Oh I just remembered a funny one: remember when it came out that Uber employees were using "God view" to spy on ex-partners, etc? For years. Yeah I'm pretty sure the TOS didn't have a section "Our employees may, from time to time, spy on you at their discretion." Actually the opposite, Uber explicitly said they couldn't access ride information for its users.
The company can certainly make a calculated risk of going against their TOS and their promise to the customers at the cost of potential risk of their reputation.
Note that such reputation risks are external and internal. The reputation reflects on the executive team and there is a risk that the executive team members may leave or attempt to get the unscrupulous employee fired.
Reputation has far more value than whatever they gain by lying. Besides, they can just say "We do xyz" because <1% of users read the TOS and less than <0.1% care enough to not use the service.