As a desktop kbin user, there's no strikethrough. Unsure as to why, if kbin is markdown. Strikethrough is considered advanced markdown formatting so I'm guessing kbin didn't include it. Now I'm curious to see how much common markdown is visible on kbin's desktop platform.
Guide for those unfamiliar with markdown, so you can see what I'm doing. ✔ means I can see it on desktop kbin, ❌ means it remains unformatted (formatting characters remain).
Horizontal rule ✔
Testing MD (headings)
-
bullet points ✔
- sub bullets (no tab on kbin; use 4 spaces) ✔
-
bold ✔
-
emphasis ✔
-
~~strikethrough~~ ❌
-
escaping *characters* ✔
-
code (inline)✔
quote ✔
There seems some confusion over its legality though, and people talking about reporting it to attorney generals etc. But that protection if private information: the information that they put on a public platform, agree to display publicly, to strangers; that's not private information at all.
You may as well say that people on the street have no right to observe that you walked into the McDonald's next to them, and you will report them for stalking. It's not merely unenforceable, it makes you look foolish to even threaten that it is.
I wouldn't put much past Hoffman or his admins at this point, but what people are suggesting as malice is extremely unlikely. The idea that Hoffman has commanded the few admin staff he's decided to keep on staff to go through arbitrary users to restore an arbitrary number of comments is farfetched.
It's far more likely that comments are from locked subs becoming visible again, and/or that the sheer server load from so many users making requests to delete/edit their content is leading to 503 errors, or database writing issues. Reddit code is basically one long string of spaghetti at this point.