You’re assuming the data is actually handled with care, and lives in a system designed for this sort of thing, but it’s probably not. Some data scientist who w

You’re assuming the data is actually handled with care, and lives in a system designed for this sort of thing, but it’s probably not. Some data scientist who wasn’t even supposed to be able to view stuff managed to copy data from prod to dev, maybe by accident. Then an engineer who intended to be testing an in place transform pipeline actually wrote a copy elsewhere, maybe once for each test, and didn’t even notice. This stuff happened off and on for like fifteen years while projects and people all changed and no one cares, because sure there’s some vague gestures in the direction of compliance, security, and privacy but it’s just a token effort because anyone who really starts asking questions is let go for not being a team player. Syncing updates to some “main” copy won’t make it easy to delete dupes.