There are 3 grades of deficient seat, each with different occupancy restrictions, but policy is for flight management to move fare paying customers out of all of them wherever possible. They can’t possibly know if the Gold in 9F is happy with no in seat power, but they do know that the majority of passengers (real ones, not FTers) do prefer things to work than having a specific seat in the cabin, so they act to minimise the total number of complaints. Given how often aircraft allocations change this can often need to be done very quickly, with no time to ask too many questions. Of course a seat could be fixed before the flight, or staff put into it, so it looks as if there was never anything wrong. I know FT loves a conspiracy theory but there really isn’t any malice involved.

Cabin crew wouldn’t necessarily know any of this - the only bit of it they’re told is if there’s a seat that must not be occupied under any circumstances.