As much as public modlogs are required, the lack of accountability of some mods repeatedly reported for power tripping makes me question sometimes if all of this is not in vain.

Maybe it seems that way since mods don't always or often yield to pressure on YPTB, but if there wasn't a modlog or if they could hide it and not announce actions publicly. We wouldn't even know. People would still complain about their bans but there would be no public evidence. No one could make a critical assessment based on the public evidence it would be the banned person's word against the mods. That's what a life without the modlog is, that's what it is on Reddit. I do not believe that real people want to go back to that. Server admins and mods maybe but not people.

On the other hand, there are several features that Lemmy always ignored, and that exist on Piefed

I believe the second, third, and possibly the fourth one are coming in later Lemmy versions.