That's how the scorched-earth delete tools have worked for a long time, since well before the big exodus.
Which is one of the reasons that I doubt that's a barrier to restoring the comments and posts, if they wanted to.
People should think of the delete tools as being a symbolic protest, with the collateral damage of denying random nice people the comments/posts later -- but not as providing protection from Reddit reanimating their comments/posts later, nor denying it to someone who really wants to dig it up.
Which is one of the reasons that I doubt that's a barrier to restoring the comments and posts, if they wanted to.
People should think of the delete tools as being a symbolic protest, with the collateral damage of denying random nice people the comments/posts later -- but not as providing protection from Reddit reanimating their comments/posts later, nor denying it to someone who really wants to dig it up.