why would I want the history of my post to have a bunch of deleted replies?
Because one day, you might want to delete your replies, too. Also, you don't "own" the replies to your post. Someone replied because they felt like it and when they feel like it, they should be able to delete their own reply.
If you want privacy, just use an anon account
@anon UX sucks if you're already logged in and anon has higher fees. Also, privacy is not binary.
i really dislike this @ delete feature. I think it hurts the platform immensely.
We've had it for a while now, I think it's great and I think it didn't hurt us at all. It empowers stackers which is what we want: More power to stackers.