I understand your why, but in the end, I think defederation is probably going to do more harm than good. Lemmy.world and beehaw are both large instances, and for a whole group on one, a non-negligible amount of content just disappeared. Sure, they could just make new accounts somewhere else, but there’s no way all of them will. For those that won’t, the whole of Lemmy just got a lot less valuable.
I think that ultimately, large amounts of defederation, or just large instances defederation each other, is going to harm Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole. More people might migrate to smaller instances. Some will collapse under the strain, some might become big, follow the cycle and sew more division within the fediverse. A lot of people will get tired of juggling accounts and return to more toxic, but easier, centralized alternatives.
Of course, just not defederating anything isn’t a solution either. Well, I mean, it is in a technical sense, but it doesn’t get to the root of the issue. My best idea would be some solution that allows users of certain instances to still see content and subscribe to communities, but limit their ability to interact. Think something like sliding defederation. Admins would be able to set what users of specific instances can and can’t do, from voting, commenting, submitting down to total defederation for the most extreme cases.
Of course, the best code I’ve managed myself is a semi-functional python module, so…
That’s what sourcing content is for. All the communities I moderate require sources when possible, and proof of best effort when not.
Your suggestion would make hentai communities all but impossible for the exact reasons you already stated.
Linking only to an art page would make the communities functionally useless. People don’t come to follow a million links, open a hundred web pages, and sign up for a dozen services in hopes of seeing something they like, they come to see the content, same as in any IRL content community.
Nude photos are cheap and easy to produce, so those communities would never be starved for content, but a hentai community that only allows direct images if they’re OC would be dead on arrival.