There have been numerous posts in the DL Forum addressing areas other than buddy passes, mainly involving a belief that pass riding personnel are getting upgrades that should be going to elites.
It's my opinion that pass travel is a component of employee compensation which is governed by policies and rules and that transparency would go a long way in eliminating misunderstandings and urban legends that abound in the customer community. Customers need to understand that it is a means of allowing the airline to provide a benefit in lieu of cash salary.
There are also the Pilot and FA agreements which contain separate rules and privileges. While these should not necessarily be made public, a synopsis would again dispel rumors and urban legends.
I can't speak about AA (new or old) but based on information gathered from public forums and FB, there does appear to be a serious problem involving the sale of buddy passes and other instruments which Delta is trying to address. IMO, if they went public with the rules and made the public aware of the potential consequences of purchasing these tickets, it might help rather than hinder their efforts to control the situation.
I am not in favor of having material non-public information divulged that would give a customer or a competitor proprietary information. i.e. as we know, employees have access to the capacity loads of every flight and use the information to judge which flights offer the best opportunity for pass travel. We, like many non-employee pass riders have no direct access to DLNET and rely on our sponsor to keep us updated on pertinent information. Fortunately, we have a great relationship with our son and he does a good job of keeping us up to date on policy and rule changes, checking loads and handling our listings. Sadly, not everyone is as fortunate as we are.
There is a fee based web site which collects load data and sells their analysis to zED riders, assisting them to determine similar information when they do not have access to another airline's systems. Recently, both AA and DL have had the site remove their information. If you're not familiar with the site, ask & I'll PM you their URL.