Hacker News doesn't allow old threads to deprecate and doesn't allow you to delete your account. You choose to create a permanent public record of everything everyone has ever said on this forum, and I've seen mods go back months into a commenter's history to do exactly that.
What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Anyone can email us to have comments deleted if there are no replies, or anonymized/redacted if they no longer want the comment linked to their identity.
We cite past comments only to demonstrate a pattern when taking action against a user who has a history of guidelines breaches.
It's a long-established norm on HN that weaponizing historical comments in a present-day argument is not considered a fair debating tactic, as we have no idea if the person still agrees with what they posted a long while ago, nor whether the context of the historical comment is relevant to the present topic.
Geese and ganders have nothing to do with it and I don't know why you're using my efforts to uphold fair debating between community members as grounds to attack our moderation.
The energy of "highlight[ing] bad faith actors" is not what we're going for here. The guidelines ask us to "assume good faith", and there are valid reasons why someone's present-day position could (appear to) contradict a historical position. The best reason is that they have undergone some personal growth, which we would hope of most people over a year or more, and we definitely want to allow space for that on HN.
What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.