User > showdead

Everyone should have this option turned on.

As someone with it on, I'm very glad off is the default.

The majority are spam and rage baiting but a large enough amount to be concerning seem to be simply middle of the road opinions by otherwise fairly normal users who have strayed to far from the group in terms of some combination of tone or politics.

For those, we have a vouch button. But a dead comment doesn't send anyone to jail, so I agree that it causes less harm to hide a few harmless comments than to let everyone see some of the vile nonsense and/or blatant spam that gets flagged or hellbanned.

The spam comments are easy to skip over. Having them visible costs nothing.