The pins are on the outside making it easy to visually inspect for damage, or obstruction. With USB C a bit of conductive debris can be in the hollow cavity in the connector and cook your hardware. Or bend pins. Watched it happen.

Also if you work in high security environments where badusb attacks are a risk, lightning makes it is even easy to inspect data delivery pins are intentionally missing before you plug in a cable to an airgapped machine.

With USB C you have to custom make complicated usb m-to-f condom devices with transparent enclosures so you can visibly inspect the PCB traces. I have worked in high security environments where these were a must.

Further lightning is simply a solid metal connector and more structurally sound. It is hard to bend pins or cause a short. I have distributed a lot of usb-c devices and watched people hand them back to me with snapped or crushed connectors many times.

I hate that Lightning was made by Apple instead of the USB standards boards.

USB Type C is a terrible connector. I literally use laptops with barrel jack power to avoid it.

Do you have a source for the question you are asking?