How does the modlog work across different instances and fedi software?

I’m trying to find the reason a specific comment by another user was removed, but the modlog on piefed.zip for that user is empty. I figured that just meant mod actions don’t federate, which makes sense, but I also don’t see the removal in the lemmy.world modlog (the instance for both that user and the community the comment was in). If mod actions don’t federate then I assume it can’t be in the modlog of some third unrelated instance, which seems to rule out all other options and shows my understanding of the situation is clearly wrong in some way. I’m not linking the user or the post to try to avoid dogpiling of the user and/or the mod, and to keep the focus on the question rather than the comment’s content, but if it’s somehow relevant please let me know