This strikes me as an archetypal example of the legalistic sort of thinking that is popular with a vocal minority of internet forum users who like to make litigious arguments, look for problems that don't actually exist in practice, then demand bureaucratic systems to "solve" the "problems". I don't believe that we're violating human rights by operating HN, and the idea of building software to address such cases as "someone taking over the domain and making it a porn site" is an example of what I mean by problems that don't exist in practice.

I don't mean to pick on you personally—it's a style of thinking that I've encountered on a regular basis. Being a moderator, and thus a sort of bureaucrat, attracts arguments from the bureaucratically minded. All I can tell you is that it's the opposite of how we think about HN. In my view it would be a big mistake to let it direct how we operate HN or what features to add. The way I look at it, HN users have a right to an interesting forum that doesn't suck (or at least relatively doesn't suck), that's a hard problem, and anything that detracts focus from it is a really bad idea. I get that you think differently and I don't mean to be disrespectful. But yes, I am thinking about the culture of HN.

I don't think what you did was awful, especially since you went to the effort of explaining exactly what was changed and why.

However, I also think there should be space for discourse about the mechanics of the action; however academic that discussion might end up being.

Personally, I think a suggestion to the OP encouraging them to edit the post themself might have been a less controversial method of achieving the same aim.