Though not pertinent to my original comment, that newyorker article does have a portion where experts argue that the misconfigured bulk emailer explanation which you bring-up does not hold water:
I'm saying 9to5mac as an apple enthusiast site has a reason to run the post it did and that since technical people like to talk about technical things of course there's someone connected to the story making those arguments then largely non-technical reporters have trouble making sense of it all.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-co...
I'm saying 9to5mac as an apple enthusiast site has a reason to run the post it did and that since technical people like to talk about technical things of course there's someone connected to the story making those arguments then largely non-technical reporters have trouble making sense of it all.