If you want to rewrite history it doesnt help to have lots of old copies lying around. Any data not under government control is a threat.
Isn't Baidu under government control anyway?
Yes, but the effort to go through and scrub that much data to ensure only the ideas you want out are getting out would be massive. Seems easier to just shut the door and board up the room than to try and clean it.
If zshbleaker doesn’t respond, I’d guess that over time what’s acceptable and not acceptable changes (e.g. opinions about particular people who may have fallen out of favor, or Taiwan policy toggling between bellicose and conciliatory, etc) so rather than getting in trouble for providing acess to “inappropriate” content you simply ditch it.