Delete implies the ability to forcibly remove a note from existence.

Are ya’ll saying the “spec” forces a relay operator to remove a post and stop serving it? 

Or is this “spec” simply a voluntary action relay operators can abide by? 

It’s important to communicate factual information to users, and the way I see it once you’ve “published” to outside relays the authority over that contents storage and removal is outside of the users control.

Not saying things can’t be removed from nostr, just saying that giving a user the right to “delete” from other people’s hardware seems like a bit of poor use of language, which isn’t unusual for nostr developers. 

 You're not wrong. It's voluntary. What should get communicated is that you can absolutely send a request for deletion from clients that support it and that it is a best effort delete, but the data might still exist in perpetuity until the end of time on machines that don’t respect your request for deletion. Even if the signed content gets deleted from all machines, people can still take screenshots! Expectations should be curbed.