Censorship is absolutely rampant on Lemmy. I don’t post particularly controversial stuff, but I am an active commenter and I’ve noticed that mods will just wipe my comments or those of others on a whim. I think this is a huge issue and one of the biggest downsides about switching from reddit. I very rarely had comments removed on reddit and when I did I received a notice at least. This seemingly secretive wipe of comments sometimes a full day later feels very oppressive. Anyway, I know they show up in the mod log, but that’s certainly not a place I want to scour on a regular basis. Is there any easy way to setup a monitor to at least alert me if one of my posts or comments are removed? I think mods should be required to contact users and provide an explanation - right now its way too much power for mods to be curating content so heavily.
The only thing I can think of is to somehow subscribe to the modlog. That will have the entire thing.
As for moderation, you aren't dealing with a huge corporation, you're dealing with individuals who choose to host their own server and have their own ideas for how it should run. If you don't like it, the true freedom is that you can start your own instance and communities. But you need to put in the work to convince people to switch.