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The differences between UK and USA editions of popular books can be quite marked, if the book was originally written in UK.
The easiest place to see this in full swing is in Agatha Christie's books, which are everywhere. I've just been comparing a US paperback edition of The Clocks with the UK Fontana paperback, and am amazed at how much has been cut from the USA version. Somewhere around 10,000 words is my guess.
What's worse, much of it is in the dialogue, and as everybody knows, the red herrings, and the carefully buried clues, are almost always in the dialogue. Agatha Christie read the proofs from the UK publisher with great care, and her mantra was that the publisher's editors must not change a letter, comma, or spelling "mistake" in her dialogue. It all had a purpose, even the seemingly pointless and confused ramblings of some old lady.
A good example is A Murder is Announced where a part of the solution lay in a dithering speech by an old lady who sometimes said "Lettie" and sometimes "Lottie" when talking of her friend. If an editor casually harmonised the spelling of the name, a key clue would be lost.
Yet in The Clocks, whole blocks of dialogue have been omitted, including sections from one interview which, in the UK edition, provided a certain amount of intentional confusion and tension and left a character as a potential suspect until quite late in the book, while in the US edition that character is effectively diminished as a possible suspect. (And no, the character wasn't the murderer.)
Christie books are not particularly long-- this one is about 80 thousand words-- so it can't have been to save paper. It must have just been "routine" editing although why I can't imagine.
An obvious clue as to which you're reading is the spelling. US publishers quite naturally use US spelling in their editions of UK authors' books. And title changes.
But on the OP's specific point that a modern digital edition you buy might not be the same as the author wrote or intended, and that anyone can monkey with the text, is true enough. Some people digitizing a book themselves might easily be tempted to edit to some degree or another as they go. Or they might like to change things for subtle propaganda purposes. Short of buying and proofing against a known reliable original, you'll only find out by accident.
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