Considering that all of these machines come up/down cyclically and automatically for sanitizing (pasteurizing) purposes, as described higher ITT, you're a great example of how data can be massaged to drive whatever narrative you want.
It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas misconfigured.
It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas that are old-style manual-clean.
It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas disabled for some other reason (ingredient supply disruption? Demand not worth the cost of keeping the machine on all the time?).
It is, indeed, possible that there is correlation without causation.
But the real answer is "We don't know why, and huh, isn't that interesting."
If they're automatically reporting via API to the online store, so the author can check the status in his script, they're all the same model with auto-sanitize. The old manual clean models always report online, then the customer gets rejected and refunded when they actually go pick up their order, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread about some NYC locations. Nice try, but you know, burden of proof on the accuser and whatnot.
That adds doubt on one possibility (though I don't know if those devices are reporting their up/down status via a voltage checker for manual cleaning units), but there are other possibilities.
