I guess? Maybe the records were exported one at a time and formatted for excel vs in an array for programmatic access
That's usual context where I see it. Often ends up with csv's where you have columns of the data people are interested in and one column containing all the metadata bundled up in JSON as a string.
Its not great to work with.
people want to put "json" on their resume but cant be bothered to spend 10 minutes to learn how to actually use it. You end up with stuff like this.