[akerl_]

Is it?

Soft delete is really only a viable option if you're the provider. If you're Patreon and you get a court order with your name on it mandating that you take some content offline but preserve it for the legal proceedings, you soft delete it and you're all set.

But if you're a user of Patreon, you can't know for sure that if you hit the delete button, it's actually a soft delete on Patreon's end, or how long it will stay soft before it actually gets permanently deleted. You also don't generally have a way to access it down the road other than reaching out to the vendor's support staff.

[_boffin_]

Why even need soft delete in this case instead of just making an archive of all data and then deleting?

[wmf]

It's easier to undelete if you realize that the original takedown order was unjustified.

[akerl_]

If you're asking me, I'm not the one who said this was what soft delete was for.