Is it kosher to send 404 or 410, but show content?

Question

Over the past two days, there has been a lot of discussion about deleted Meta issues. One of the suggestions that dealt with the issue of resolving issues that are now considered off-topic was showing some popular deleted questions for everyone - with a gray look, what 10k + users get when viewing a deleted question.

In this image, the background is grayed out, interaction is not possible, but all content remains available:

I suggested that pages could send 404 not found or 410 gone at the same time, if the overwhelming desire is to put them out of the search index.

So, the content will be shown, but the 4xx status code is sent.

However, there was a comment that criticized this idea :

Ehhh why send 404 when the link exists publicly? You are violating semantics of code 404

I am inclined to disagree: what is shown in the body of the reaction (to satisfy the curiosity of us people) does not matter much, does it? And the cars get 4xx to work.

Who is right?

Answer 1

In my opinion, if you are going to show the original content (yes, the colors are different from the person, but not for the search engine), then it is not suitable for returning the status that was not found or left. It is either there or not; it cannot be there at the same time and does not exist (unless, of course, this is the content of Schrödinger).

It would be more appropriate for the URL to be constantly redirected to the unindexed URL of the archive; or if the original content really disappeared, then an unindexed 404 related to similar content, if possible, but I think it should be kept short and sweet.

As an Internet user - I personally hate 404 pages that are actually trying to display meaningful content.

Ultimately, I want to know if I have what I am looking for or not. If not, tell me directly. Do not tell me what you “used” to have any content, but got rid of it!