> Soft delete isn’t language used by users so it should not be used by engineers when making product facing decisions.

Users generally don’t even know what a database record is. There is no reason that engineers should limit their discussions of implementation details to terms a user might use.

> “Delete” “archive” “hide” are the type of actions a user typically wants, each with their own semantics specific to the product.

Users might say they want “delete”, but then also “undo”, and suddenly we’re talking about soft delete semantics.

> A flag on the row, a separate table, deleting a row, these are all implementation options that should be led by the product.

None of these are terms an end user would use.