Do you have any idea how much space energy maintenance and a plethora of other items it would take to be backing up every comment and post on the site?

Yes, and if said data is worth it, (or at least in the mind of whatever executive is in charge of such a decision at least or Spez himself) they would absolutely spend the money to store at least one complete backup. They’re mostly not doing monthly backups or whatever, but at least one prior to a major policy change announcement that they knew would piss off a lot of people is reasonable.

You’re thinking too logically here, to whatever executive (s) are in charge and probably Spez himself, data = AI = $$$, Lots of data = AI = $$$$$ someone along the lines went “Our users will probably be pissed and start fucking with their profiles, IT backup all the things” and IT/infra engineers probably went (Just like you) that’s going to be a LOT of data and cost" and then that same exec probably went “Idgaf, you’re just some engineer, you don’t how much value it has on the markettttt!! So do it”