The point I’m making is that no matter what you do, a conspiracy theorist is going to twist the narrative to fit their world view.

Well, the world view in this case is 'the media lies' - and that's correct in this case (though it wasn't intentional).

Whereas the sources spoon-feeding them this attitude are, of course, unimpeachable. (They don't redact, or admit fault.)

I generally find that anyone expecting error-free perfection in any subjective field from an entire industry can be safely dismissed as a complete idiot. Intelligent people look at the processes that produce outcomes, not the outcomes.

(In this case, the process that produced the outcome was a former DDG employee mailing in an oped of incredibly questionable quality that criticized a DDG competitor, that was eventually pulled. Wired should probably read op-eds before publishing them.)

If they admit it's "inaccurate" / "does not meet [their] editorial standards" then it's hardly "scrubbing proof"...

Admitting it was trash is proof of inaccurate reporting, whether they remove TFA or not

As for the conspiracy folks, they'll think what they want, regardless of evidence presented to them. That's the whole point.