Is it any different here? Is this not the standard setup for all forums and considered perfectly right and normal?
HN has problems but moderation being arbitrary isn't really one of them.
They implemented a change recently where users can make their profiles private which seemed like a cool idea to prevent this sort of thing, but in practice it is used almost exclusively by bad actors. Some users suggested the change was made to facilitate government intelligence agencies running influence campaigns on the platform.
I learned a simply truth about social media. When you answer a person in a discussion, are you answering the person or the world?
When you are answering the person, and the person has seen your response by time or counter answer, there really is no need to keep your post alive beyond a few weeks.
By then the topic is already on page 10 and only of interest to google / bots / AI.
Is this a problem for the future? Not really ... if the answer is important like i want the world to keep seeing it, you keep it undeleted.
If you did a product review, keep it alive, but just answer people, or having discussions that have no relevants a year from now, just get rid of them.
But lets be honest, most of our answers are often discussions and not some deep zen state thinking exercises that everybody needs to see years from now.
The world has not gotten better and your faced with a dilemma. Reject social media totally and avoid all the mess of people using your past post history, bots and AI/LLMs eating your data non-stop, or potential profiling. Let alone if governments change...
Or use this trick ... there really is no perfect answer and you do what you feel is good for you.
As someone whose family comes from the more left wing Catholic culture, which is a thing, I sometimes am disappointed when Catholics are thoughtlessly lumped into right wing culture war topics. It feels like this assumption is particularly common in the US vs. other places.
Edit: this comment on such a politically touchy topic lasted almost 40 minutes before getting 2 downvotes, honestly I'm impressed it lasted almost an hour.
Of course as always, the downvote is a signal of communication, and without a reply, all communication I receive is that this is a sensitive topic. If there's anything factually wrong I'll be happy to change it. (And I would consider myself having spent ~~too much~~ enough time on reddit to know which comics are popular and/or get folks banned easily.)