Saying "they removed my life's work" when you has a local copy of it is, at best, intellectually dishonest.
Local copy may have been deleted. Developer may have just got a new laptop and traded the old one. Argue at length over having multiple redundant backups perhaps, but the simple truth is his work was deleted, and it's only by luck (or foresight) he has a local copy.
That it even happened is a huge problem, whataboutism aside. My trust in the longevity and stability of the service offered by GitHub is significantly eroded by this news.