>> Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done.

>> Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done. > That's not how computers work. No, not necessarily: computers definitely support hard deletion. > You'll mark it as deleted and then the "deleted" column (or field or whatever) will turn from false to true. No forensic evidence will be lost. Twitter likely implemented it as a soft delete, but that's by no means certain. And even if they did, a soft delete would mean only Twitter's internal teams would have access to the evidence, and there may be a desire for the evidence to be publicly accessible.