It’s a discussion of principle.

This is a foreign concept?

It appears to be a foreign concept for you.

I don’t believe that it’s a fundamentally bad thing to converse in moderated spaces; you do. You say “giving somebody the power to arbitrarily censor and modify our conversation is a fundamentally bad thing” like it’s a fact, indicating you believe this, but you’ve been given the tools to avoid giving others the power to moderate your conversation and you have chosen not to use them. This means that you are saying “I have chosen to do a thing that I believe is fundamentally bad.” Why would anyone trust such a person?

For that matter, is this even a discussion? People clearly don’t agree with you and you haven’t explained your reasoning. If a moderator’s actions are logged and visible to users, and users have the choice of engaging under the purview of a moderator or moving elsewhere, what’s the problem?

It is deeply bad that…

Why?

Yes, I know, trolls, etc…

In other words, “let me ignore valid arguments for why moderation is needed.”

But such action turns any conversation into a bad joke.

It doesn’t.

And anybody who trusts a moderator is a fool.

In places where moderator’s actions are unlogged and they’re not accountable to the community, sure - and that’s true on mainstream social media. Here, moderators are performing a service for the benefit of the community.

Have you never heard the phrase “Trust, but verify?”

Find a better way.

This is the better way.