If you were to assume a dystopian cause, you assume a bug accidentally revealed the nefarious plan, and the charitable view would assume a bug broke proper deletion of physical files when their db record was set for removal, or some such. Either way, we assume a bug. But, the conspiracy theory requires additional assumptions and is, all else being equal, less likely, overall.
I think the POV chosen, one way or the other, reveals an interesting bias, like that white/gold/blue dress. But I find this even more interesting because probably most of us here have worked at software companies as developers, and know personally how utterly normal unintentional bugs like a failed deletion bug would be, particularly if black-box QA is oblivious to it because everything seems fine. No company is immune, and Apple has had some pretty embarrassing bugs over the years.
I think the POV chosen, one way or the other, reveals an interesting bias, like that white/gold/blue dress. But I find this even more interesting because probably most of us here have worked at software companies as developers, and know personally how utterly normal unintentional bugs like a failed deletion bug would be, particularly if black-box QA is oblivious to it because everything seems fine. No company is immune, and Apple has had some pretty embarrassing bugs over the years.