A user with that mindset has decided to put faith that the moderation team will make good decisions on what they should read. Okay, sure, fine. You want your users to have that faith. But now you are turning comments that annoy you into “why was this comment folded?” discussions. If you fold a comment that people agree with, you’re inviting the community to vent about moderation, which I guess you could sensibly handle by just folding those comments too. Problem solved, everyone’s happy.
The whole point seems to be that you’re desperately searching for some compromise where the moderator can dictate the discussion while avoiding accusations of stifling free speech. But if your comment is the one getting folded, you might not see your free speech as being respected. Why is there a barrier to people seeing my thoughts, but no barrier for others? It’s a dream of reducing visibility of opinions you don’t like while still being a heroic free speech warrior.
People on forums understand that moderators exist and there are things they cand say that will be censored and removed immediately. So you’re working with everyone knowimg speech is not free and we need to trust moderation will not overstep. A modlog for transparency helps with that. Visibly seeing that mods are managing opinions that don’t cross the line is not helpful.
My first thought too.