I have created some software that is capable of synchronising posts from Reddit to Lemmy. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it works as a such:
People can request new subreddits to be mirrored on [email protected]. A bot (open source) will monitor the threads there, and if it finds a new request for a subreddit, it will make a new community on the Lemmit server, and add it to its monitored list. It will then make periodic checks to see if any new posts (it doesn’t copy any comments) have been posted on reddit, and copy those over.
Users can then subscribe to those communities from their own lemmy instance, and from there federation will pick it up. Or at least, that’s the theory. At the moment, federation is not working awesomely, and that is where my lack of fediverse knowledge comes in. Maybe it needs more time, or something is not so properly - I don’t know.
Furthermore: registrations on this server are closed. The point of this service is not to become a community on its own, but to deliver, ehh, “original” content to all the rest of the Fediverse while it’s going through a ramp-up phase. Besides, the instance is running on a pretty small vps, and I rather have this thing manage itself. There is a [email protected] community for further questions about the project itself though, in case people want to discuss it further.
So ehm… Let me know what you think :)
Defederation isn’t a bad thing, it’s just curation. Especially in this case where you’re not breaking any human<->human connections.
I’d still prefer something along the lines of Masto’s silencing, which would get rid of instances from global feeds yet still allow follows and interactions, but upstream already has too much on their plate and I’m sure given the time something similar would be implemented.