It respects your privacy just as much as the alternative, which again, is reddit.

The alternative isn't Reddit. It's Tildes, Lobste.rs, Lemmy forks, etc...

News aggregation isn't a binary choice with Reddit on one side. I think if you are saying your software/platform "respects privacy as much as Reddit" that should really be a red or yellow flag. The way Reddit treats user data shouldn't really be an aspiration.

If you edit your post, the previous version isn’t saved.

I haven't dived into how Lemmy handles edits specifically yet, but my understanding is that a version of the edit is saved into a log. This also brings up the point - if I can edit my post with a period to "delete" it, why doesn't the delete work that way too?

You are posting on a public website, you can’t expect that level of privacy, nothing ever gets deleted on the internet.

I didn't say I expected it. I said I wanted it. Just because Twitter is terrible for privacy doesn't mean Lemmy can't aspire to better than Reddit or Twitter for privacy.