Exactly - theres a lot of stuff that if an individual/small business owner did, they'd be personally onerously fined or jailed.. but corporations get a pass. Corporations also have a lot of money to pay good lobbyists & lawyers such that laws are pretty forgiving, loopholes are found & exploited, and finally they are vigorously defended if the government ever does try to crack down.
Ubers behavior during its growth phase, and even now is a good example of this. The latest letter of the law vs spirit of the law thing Uber did was circumvent the NYC law to try and ensure Uber drivers get a fair minimum wage.
To avoid having to pay any difference to make up the hourly wage to drivers, Uber runs an algorithm which kicks drivers out of the app randomly if demand gets too low, without warning or indication of when they can get back in. It can be minutes or hours. So the drivers remain on the road, driving/idling, waiting to get back into the app. The "work" is still getting done, but it doesn't count against Uber.
Imagine a small restaurant doing similar, deciding at random slow times instead of sending staff home for the day, they assign them no tables and mark them as off-the-clock. When demand picks up again, they get assigned some tables and resume making money.
The whole independent contractor on-demand app market is an automated exploitation engine.