/r/StarTrek founder and primary steward from 2008-2021
Currently on the board of directors for StarTrek.website
The primary purpose of the defederation mechanism is not to block content from readers, it’s to prevent brigades. A big problem on Reddit is vote manipulation (not to mention shit stirrers showing up uninvited). On Reddit some mods would just ban everyone who ever posted in a subreddit (like T_D), defederation is essentially the same thing.
I have had similar thoughts, I think the answer ultimately lies in active mods that can really get to know a community and it’s users and identify when users are pushing a narrative even if they can’t confirm if they are a bot or not.
Also as @dessalines@lemmy.ml pointed out, user registrations. On startrek.website we have a question that is easy for a star trek fan to answer but not easy for a bot (although getting back to your concern, chatGPT probably would have no problem)