The previous flight before the disaster actually made an emergency distress call to return back but after disabling the automatic system decided to continue onwards and did so with no further problems in the flight.

Pilots are given all this information and are meant to read it before takeoff but there is no way to enforce that.

Maintenance logs show the AoA vane was replaced, but Lion Air has a sketchy history with maintenance and what's written in the logs doesn't always reflect the reality, they are one of the cheapest airlines in the world and need to keep planes flying. I'd say that's likely the root of the issue combined with pilots not following the procedure books when faced with anomalous behavior.

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/lion-air-plane-fault-fou...

That's what I read in the newspaper at the time.