[LunaSea]

> The US is the exception here, not the norm.

That is incorrect. This is actually the norm in most countries in the world.

> Most countries actually don’t care about you working on a tourist visa, as long as it’s incidental to the travel

But it's not

> and the work is online.

The work being online just makes it better hidden and thus a more difficult fraud to detect but it has no incidence on the legality of the work.

[ghaff]

This comes up periodically.

Generally speaking, events, meetings, etc. are fine in many countries with just a basic visitor's visa. (US, it needs to be a B-1 Business visa.)

However, as you point out, remote online work is hard to police. That said, you shouldn't say that remote work is the reason for your visit. And you should be somewhat discrete--e.g. not renting a co-working space.