It is deeply bad that a moderator can remove any post or reply.

the thing youre missing about the fediverse.. if a community does not approve of a mod they can literally pick up and move their community to a new community or even a different instance altogether.

this has happened at least a few times.

moderation is a necessary management tool, and yes, it is certainly abused.. but the fediverse gives us the ability to tell mods to go fuck themselves.

Necessary? That is a large statement.
What leads you to say that it's necessary?
- The entire history of the Internet my guy.
- The fact that unmoderated places attract pedophiles sharing pictures, Spambots, and trolls.
  Go take a look at a random board on 8kun if you don't believe me.
  It's largely unmoderated, you'll love it!!!

"We don't need moderators!" shouts the Troll, in the wrong community.

either a troll or just an idiot, doesn't matter imo

If you are saying nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear from moderation, right?
- I mean... "To fear"? No. But There are plenty legitimate to remove comments and posts that have nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to do with mod overreach or censorship.
  removing derailing threads from heated discussions
  removing the annoying "just asking questions" people from LGBTQ+ safe spaces
  removing posts accidentally posted into the wrong community
  removing troll posts
  banning repeat troublemakers not willing to follow the rules
  removing aggressive, sexist, racist,... posts
  On the other hand, anti-moderation people only ever seem to come up with "but I want to be able to post whatever I want!"
  "Free speech" in this context means: you can go create your own instance or community, with blackjack and hookers! And mods can use the tools at their disposal to enable the rest of us to not have to deal with bullshit.

What's the better way?

The better way is one where control resides solely with the user.
- The instance admin is legally responsible for everything posted on their instance.
  Giving all the control to the users would literally carry the risk of going to prison.
- As a user, you can:
  Review instance and community rules prior to participating
  Review the moderator logs to confirm that moderation activities have been in line with the rules
  If you notice a discrepancy, e.g., over-moderation, you can hold the mods accountable and draw attention to it or simply choose not to engage in that instance or community
  Host your own instance
  Create communities in an existing instance or your own instance
  If you host your own instance and communities within that instance, then at that point, you have full control, right? Other instances can de-federate from yours.
- That's embarrassingly ignorant.

Yes, I know, trolls etc. But such action turns any conversation into a bad joke. And anybody who trusts a moderator is a fool.

Not just trolls - there’s much worse content out there, some of which can get you sent to jail in most (all?) jurisdictions.

And even ignoring that, many users like their communities to remain focused on a given topic. Moderation allows this to happen without requiring a vetting process prior to posting. Maybe you don’t want that, but most users do.

Find a better way.

Here’s an option: you can code a fork or client that automatically parses the modlog, finds comments and posts that have been removed, and makes them visible in your feed. You could even implement the ability to reply by hosting replies on a different instance or community.

For you and anyone who uses your fork, it’ll be as though they were never removed.

Do you have issues with the above approach?

This is a discussion of principle. Save the details till later.
- You said, and I quote "Find a better way." I don't agree with your premise - this is the better way - but I gave you a straightforward, reasonable way to achieve something important to you... and now you're saying that "This is a discussion of principle."
  You've just proven that it doesn't take a moderator to turn a conversation into a bad joke - you can do it on your own.

Find a better way

Mind explaining what would possibly be better? Having zero moderation isn't it. And if you say AI, I'mma smack you upside the head.

What would be better is a system where the sanctity of the conversation was respected. Where there was 100% assurance that everything you said got to me and everything I said got to you. No question at all. No man in the middle censoring and altering according to his whim.
- People have been asking you for days with zero explanation: what the fuck happened to you here to make you go on this weird pseudo-crusade?
- Sounds like you want a private messenger, not a public forum...
- That's called a DM. Try it sometime.

This isn't a shower thought. Mods, please remove.

I'm a mod here. While it's not one of my favorites, it does follow the format pretty well. I try to use Rule 1 sparingly.
It's a bad look to shutdown critics. I think the votes and comments are doing a good job of bringing perspective to OP's opinion.
- Thanks for your reply. My post was meant as kind of a joke, but it's good to know the mods actually read through things.

A mod MAKES the community and makes the rules of that community.

Kinda like how you wouldn't want me to go to your and take a shit on the carpet.

Surely the constituancy of users have some hand in making the community too.
- Yes, and one single "user" with a script can destroy it if no one is moderating.

I run !news_summary@hilariouschaos.com I don't remove shit unless u are clearly violating the rules its all available via the modlog.

Why should we trust you?
- its all available via the modlog

Does your handler know you're online?

Mods who power trip get reported to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Not perfect, but that and public modlogs help

It's weird. The simple fact of being watched and told what you can say. And the possibility that what you're saying is being edited and what you're hearing is edited too.
This strikes me as abhorrent. But most of the people here call it necessary, preferable and even desirable.
- I moderate showerthoughts.
  I certainly don't know everything but I'm very sure I can't edit other people's posts.
  If a post is questionable, then I try to message people and talk it out. We are all human.
  Some people wish we moderated more aggressively to keep the post quality higher, others, like yourself wish there was less moderation. I try to leave things up unless there is an obvious violation, I try to apply the rules fairly, I am human.

You don't have to participate at all, you realize that right?

It's a discussion of principle.
- If you don't like it, go to Truth Social or X where they never delete any comments, apparently. You are a free man

I blocked all .ml communities so this problem no longer affects me

Manually? Or is there an easier way to mass block them?
- You can block entire instances. You should be able to find it in the settings in your Lemmy app. I know Tesseract and Voyager let you edit it. I think you can also filter by keywords.
Deny them engagement, let them have their echo chambers

its the same function in all forums that have mods. the problem is some doing it based on personal bias which is the wrong, and reddit allows too much leeway in what mods will ban or remove.