It's not just the fines. Even assume you negotiate the regulator (or regulators!) down to something reasonable, your international law firm with relationships

It's not just the fines. Even assume you negotiate the regulator (or regulators!) down to something reasonable, your international law firm with relationships with the various regulators is going to price out at well over $500 US/hour. For a simple complaint to the regulator, you're probably staring at $15k or more of legal. In Pinterest's case where an Instapaper complaint could have triggered a general review of their business practices, I'd roughly estimate the costs of talking to the regulator at a half million dollars. Start with their counsel ordering sales & marketing leadership to grab engineers to create and review a consent log for every outbound sales and marketing contact in their system.