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.
Maybe you could make it so that people/communities can opt out of it. Maybe add a hashtag to comments made on merged threads?
if it were a first-class kbin feature that would be a good solution. but, this is a discussion about Artemis 3rd-party app
also this is only a solution for A, not B.
The opting out part should also partially cover subs that mostly react to other posts but you’re right. This is probably only possible as an instance feature. Though, the best way to handle this is probably some repost features. Like a way to just link to a post on another magazine and everyone who clicks the post gets redirected to the magazine and/or a post with a custom title which only has another another post as their content like with Reddit reposts.