Odd conflict with W3-Total-Cache even when it’s deactivated

Hi,

I came across an odd observation today, please refer to the changes in revisions in the following gist.
https://gist.github.com/prathamesh-gharat/561135aa7bdee2a481be1cdfd264bec0/revisions
The HTML in the gist is a part of a Vue.js template.

Even when W3-Total-Cache was disabled (I checked this multiple times just to be sure), it was somehow affecting Autoptimize’s lazy load feature (the issue pointed in the gist linked above)

When I moved the plugins/w3-total-cache directory outside WordPress, it prevented the issue. I tested this multiple times.

I was able to resolve this by adding a lazy load exclusion for ‘grid-view-item__image’ but please look into the conflict with W3-Total-Cache === to ='==' transformation, it causes issues.

Please let me know if you need any other information.