>It's a long-established norm on HN that weaponizing historical comments in a present-day argument is not considered a fair debating tactic,

I think it's fair to use past comments to highlight bad faith actors.

The energy of "highlight[ing] bad faith actors" is not what we're going for here. The guidelines ask us to "assume good faith", and there are valid reasons why someone's present-day position could (appear to) contradict a historical position. The best reason is that they have undergone some personal growth, which we would hope of most people over a year or more, and we definitely want to allow space for that on HN.