See the quick inspect-element mockup I put together for an example. I'm bad at design, but I think it gets the point across. Current implementation on left, suggested on right. Also, I'm using Kbin Enhancement Suite for the modifications to instance names, but I think they are even more useful for this demonstration.
How it could work: If the same link is submitted across multiple communities in your current view (subscribed, favorites, all, etc) within a certain time period (probably 24 hours), then have them automatically group themselves into the same box, along with a brief list of the duplicate threads and instances. Use whichever of the threads has the highest score as the one to fill the title and thumbnail for the grouped thread.
I didn't make a mockup for this, but when clicking the thread, it could then import the comments from each of the grouped instances. Options on the sidebar could show you each of the instances whose comments are being shown on that page, along with an option to filter them out of your current feed, and options to add your votes to each instance's thread.
EDIT: To add, as I'm seeing some confusion in the comments: I'm envisioning this as a strictly user-side bundling of threads. This would only bundle threads as they are displayed to the user in their own feed based on communities you're subscribed to. So if the same link were to be posted to 5 different communities you subscribe to, when you view the feed, you'll see those 5 links all bundled together. Though perhaps an option could also include seeing non-subscribed duplicates, as well.
Might have to play with this idea in the Artemis app 👀
Oh please don’t. I really don’t want threads from communities I’m not explicitly choosing to follow merged. Again, I’m here instead of Reddit because I want more control over what I do and do not see.
Features like this or the “discovery” feed showing recommended posts are the opposite of the experience I want.
If I didn’t explicitly seek out the community and subscribe to it, I don’t want to see it. I don’t care if there are multiple posts on the same article or topic - I’ll find the community I want to subscribe to and if I’m that interested in the topic I’ll go search for it myself.
If you feel like you must address this the “see other discussions” approach feels the least intrusive.
A huge part of the fediverse is the autonomy to choose. So I think Artemis will keep adding all these optional features users can turn on and adjust to their liking. I don't think having these choices is detrimental to anybody who doesn't want to use them.