For people without the means to buy a domain name and host/self-host their site, or the technical know-how, GitHub Pages integrated with some sort of SSG seems like a saving grace.
However, unless you intend other people to witness your commits (and thereby, article history), you should make your site repo private. But using the github.io domain for a private repo in conjunction with GitHub’s free tier is impossible. This is exactly where something like Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages steps in. Though these services have their own caveats and premium tiers, they make do.
My site, too, uses Hugo (with a modified theme) with Vercel deploying from my (erstwhile GitHub Pages) codebase, letting me keep my repo private. Though this comes with the consequence of my modified Hugo theme not being public, I will probably share the theme via a separate repo anyway.
Now, what I have said might sound obvious and condescending to some, but I have seen tons of personal GitHub Pages sites with a public codebase, maybe because a simple markdown blog made using Pages + Jekyll/Hugo is marketed to plenty of technological novices migrating from WordPress, Wix, or any of those (terrible and unoptimized) WYSIWYG “site builders.”
So yes, if you want to hide corrections, deletions, and additions you made to your posts — and also want something like a private content archive that helps stage your articles and corrections — you should private your GitHub Pages repo and switch to something else.