Hacker News Reader

The problem is that even a few users opting out can create a bad experience for other users of the service.

I don't think you can expect users to be anything but selfishly motivated, and concerned with their own experience only. I don't think most will care about the experience of others. Certainly not if they're deleting their own account from the service. Plus the point is that in these cases, potentially the users who would most want to delete are the ones most motivated to do so: the scam/spam/fraud ringsters.

> would make users well aware of the consequences of opting out.

People don't even read the ToS (term of service). I'm pessimistic that they would even do this.