It seems you are using "moderate" as a euphemism for "censor". The definitions are extremely similar. What do you see as being the key distinction between the two?
Moderation is keeping people on topic of the forum, killing spam, trolls and sockpuppets, removing abuse and so forth, and trying to keep things on the rails and civil. Including banning trouble makers. Rather like dang does around here. That's not censorship, it's attempting to avoid anarchy. Neither is limiting the range of topics the forum or platform wants. Standards and extent will vary depending on the aims of the site.
Censorship is suppressing a view, even if it follows the standards and allowed topics of the forum. Legal censorship is a little more complex as standards vary between countries.
Having a post removed because it's spam, abusive or is off-topic is not censorship, which was the point the GP was erroneously trying to make.
Soft-censorship and derailing is done on purpose to censor certain topics which go against the establishment status quo. Reddit is fertile with such examples. If someone is making a comment which does not bode well to those in power, it is common for the thread to be sunken with low-class behavior and baits in order to shut down valid discussion by forcing an emergence of rule-breaking content.
That is a far more greater threat.
How do you propose to mitigate that?
That's exactly what censors say