Happy to have a conversation if you feel something was inappropriately removed. Our current workflow is to run questionable comments by a group with all moderators and admins before taking action. Nobody is perfect however, and we do occasionally make mistakes.

It’s not “common” as in a huge percentage of content gets removed… Most of it is fine. But we do moderate here on Lemmy and Beehaw. The perspective might be a bit skewed because some people are very vocal and complain a lot about stuff getting deleted. Some of the time unwarranted… Most communities don’t tolerate derailing arguments or spreading misinformation… Some of the time the mods also make mistakes or they’re overly strict in their communities, happens a lot in drama things and to some extent in the news and political communities. Other than that, I wouldn’t say it’s a very common thing. But yeah, comments get deleted. It depends a lot on what you engage with, and in which corner of the Fediverse. And some people like to stir up drama, usually less so on Beehaw.

I find it common enough that I unsub from some of my favorite coms

I’d say “no, but”… on Beehaw, you may find whole comment threads removed as “non productive”.

There is no financial incentive to promote “engagement”, so the policy is to apply a wide brush stroke to anything that looks like disruptive bickering… plus the subjective interpretation of the philosophy “rules”. Sometimes nuances get lost, sometimes off-topic discussions that could’ve been migrated to a different community, or continued via DM, get lost, and you may see mods deleting comments they “don’t agree with” in those wide brush strokes.

On average, it keeps a semblance of civilization though, so… 🤷