I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.
There is the "Silver screen edition" of Star Wars (first of the first, even before it got the "Episode IV"), but it only happened due to enormous efforts of fans who got an original print that should have been destroyed, digitized it with a homebrew machine, and painstakingly restored it frame by frame. That's a really fascinating story.
The original article called the alleged removal of that scene, "wimpish laziness."
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220727142524/https://www.gq-ma...