Power to the people.
The vast majority of removed comments are made to shape the conversations.
I think most people would be ok with letting admins remove illegal content, while allowing moderators shape content, as long as users could opt-in to seeing content the mods censored.
This is a win-win. If people don't want to see content they feel is offensive, they don't have to.
Let the user decide.
What you can enforce is "so and so says it is illegal" (accurate 90% or 99% or 99.9% of the time but not 100%) or some boundary that is so far away from illegal that you never have to use the ultimate truth procedure. The same approach works against civil lawsuits, boycotts and other pressure which can be brought to bear.
I think of a certain anime image board which contains content so offensive it can't even host ads for porn that stopped taking images of cosplayers or any real life people because it eliminated moderation problems that otherwise would be difficult.
There is also spam (should spam filters for email be banned because the violate the free speech of spammers?) and other forms of disingenuous communication. When you confront a troll inevitably they will make false comparisons (e.g. banning Kiwi Farms is like banning talk to the effect that trans women could damage the legitimacy of women's sports just when people are starting to watch women's sports)
On top of that there are other parties involved. That anime site I mention above has no ads and runs at very low cost but has sustainability problems because it used to sell memberships but got cut off by payment providers. You might be happy to read something many find offensive but an advertiser might not want to be seen next to it. The platform might want to do something charitable but hosting offensive talk isn't it.