Maybe the act of defederation acts like a filter to a comment thread, or at least a "click-to-view"? Comments are there unless defederated or more simply blocked by the user. Much like users can block specific magazines, users, or instances, the same filters would apply to the comments.

Voting could also have multiple purposes: one to raise/lower comments/threads across platforms and perhaps a second to allow a user to sort by "votes from [instance]". If you want to see what your preferred instance voted for toggle that (i.e. factor only votes from that instance) to get a new sort.

I agree that is a logical initial step, but I wonder about 'cross-posting' actually catching on. Reddit often saw duplicated submissions across subreddits, but was able to collate them by the "other discussions" approach simply through url-matching. Relying on cross-posting also requires users to be members of disparate communities.

Everything about this is so slightly wrong you'd think it was AI-generated

I switched right before Windows 11 released after using it on and off in either VMs or on my laptop (that I rarely used). What really helped was all the Proton stuff that Valve was doing, which meant that one of my only excuses for not just getting a second drive to put linux on as primary boot was gone. Been great since then! Enjoy the new experience and once you get past the "how do I do [windows thing] in linux" phase make sure you explore all the cool new stuff you can do in linux that isn't easy in Windows (like package management for installs and upgrades)!