This is the corporate equivalent of throwing your old computer into an empty ditch on the side of the road, and getting mad when someone responsible comes by to recycle it for you.
1) Use whatever means to get yourself forward
2) Do whatever you can to hold everyone else back
The Groups thing is a wonderful example of #2 in action. It’s not about preventing access to Groups in particular, just the general principle of preventing and hindering all and always
(There is one guy I came across trying trying to monetize what he could download of some archives. He used the Windows software PGDownload to do it. It's a lot of alt-med stuff: https://groups.rifeforum.com)
But it seems strange to me that they would actively try to thwart these efforts and remove the possibility for a great deal of good will.
a better equivalent is realizing that that computer might have important stuff and taking steps to wipe out hard drives. or retrieving those bags full of documents and letters so you can secure trashing them.
i mean, most of us do it. not saying it is right but it is the sensible thing to do. for the legal aspect and also for security.
curious, isn't archive.org affected by GDPR at all?