If the spacing is fixed, I would very much prefer to have the option to turn off “greying out” and keep the icon.
The reason is that the greyed out text is the exact same colour as the text at the bottom of the posts and the exact same colour as the divider between posts which is very thin anyways. That creates an area where it’s not easy on the eyes to discern differences between posts.
So either the greyed out text needs to change colour, or the text at the bottom (username, voting, instance etc) needs to change colour, or the divider needs to become more prominent (thicker, darker or similar).
That’s why I’m thinking maybe it’s easier to just have the option to toggle greying out and keep only the icon.