Hidden comments should be like downvoted posts: hidden yet still expandable/visible to whoever may wanna look into what the OP tried to hide.

Note that every other blogging platform in the world allows the author of a post to choose what other UGC is displayed below/alongside their own writing, to their audience.

Not having feature parity here is both a disincentive to those with large audiences, as well as unfair to them - it says that "to blog on steemit, you must give equal time to every shithead who wants to place their words below yours". That's super uncompetitive as they will simply blog elsewhere that gives them that control; but also it's just unfair. If you spend years or decades building an audience, you do not owe access to that audience to any second or third party who has an opinion about you.

It's not censorship, as you can always write your response/attack post on your own blog, where your own audience (likely much smaller) can read it if they choose. Nobody is entitled to access to someone else's audience, despite what Drunk Kanye thinks.

Presently, my Serious Blogging is reserved for my own website, which I control, due to the fact that the traffic going to the permalink sees only what I choose for them to see. If they want opinions of others about my writing, they can go to those other peoples' websites. There are too many loudmouthed whiners on the internet for me to direct my readers' eyeballs to a page I do not totally control.