Knowingly?! Clearly every developer of an app breaking because of these packages had no idea their app is going to break, and clearly it was exactly the intention. They _were_ tricked.
Can you not see a difference between this and between releasing a new package with a README saying "this module will print 'liberty liberty liberty' to your console in an infinite loop!"?
Can you not see a difference between this and between releasing a new package with a README saying "this module will print 'liberty liberty liberty' to your console in an infinite loop!"?