You keep most of what you'd expect when you transfer, but you do lose your posts.

However, I agree with you that (over-)moderation is a huge issue facing Mastodon. However, that's true of any online community run by users.

The ideal, in my opinion, it's improving the process for people to self host instances. It's simply too hard for the average person currently and the copy on websites such as masto.host is ambiguous for people who may not be experienced with such concepts. My belief is that Mastodon will thrive when there are more communities of smaller groups.