If you think that “privacy” is the wrong term: granted. But sensible deletion protocols are not too much to ask for.

Well, that is in a nutshell what I am arguing. I'm not inherently against the ability to delete things, as it can be quite useful as a quick means to say "I take this back", or "this information I shared is wrong, so I'm removing it" (although in that case I would opt to use an edit). Even "I'm embarrassed about this, so I don't want more people to look at it" is a good enough reason that I would respect, and for which I would delete the thing if it was in my possession. Essentially, I just don't think it should be treated as a privacy issue, because that might give a lot of people the wrong idea.