system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: For what reasons do companies and government bodies link to information only via downloadable PDF's when they could easily post the text and graphics to a webpage under their current domains instead?
gpt
Three main reasons:

* It's not equally easy.  Someone has to be responsible for re-formatting.  The company or government may lack the expertise (limited as it is) or manpower to do this.

* It adds an additional possibility of error (and therefore responsibility for error).  Sometimes important government or corporate documents are reviewed by teams of people for weeks before they are created.  Even something as simple as re-formatting the document can create small but important errors (e.g. moving or omitting some punctuation in a legal document).  If the general counsel says "put this on the website" and sends a pdf to the guy in IT, the IT cannot possibly screw it up if he literally puts "this" on the website.  But if he re-formats it, then he might be blamed if it somehow goes wrong.

* The document may not have reached the webmaster in a re-formattable format.  Pdf is often used by large organizations a way to manage document version control.  If it's in pdf, it's in "final" form and sometimes in a way that other people in the organization cannot mess around with it (this is kind of the flip side of the second bullet).  The general counsel intentionally not want to give Phil the webmaster the ability to tinker with the document and edit it if he is disgruntled, mischievous, or a busy-body.

(edit: third bullet)