Edit: and what do you know, 16 minutes after cross-posting this to !piefed_meta@piefed.social, Rimu agrees, changes the code, and deploys onto piefed.social to retain deleted posts. PieFed really is something!! (announcement post)
It’s up to Lemmy to safeguard that, not the OP.
Uhm, yes? The discussion was never about anything else?
Reddit changes the stuff to [Deleted] or something like that.
I know, and I think that's preferable. Gives the OP a way to delete their own stuff while not destroying arbitrary amounts of other people's conversations and arguments.