Reddit moderation style is simply an extension of classic bulletin board style moderation. I think the real issue with moderation has to do with the rate of new user intake and lack of population control. These are things classic forms have found solutions for in the past as well. Something Awful for example charged money for the privilege of posting. I’ve seen forms require you to sign up with your ISP provided email.
If an instance isn’t properly managing intake volume, they will have moderation issues. Many Lemmy instances have questionnaires and approvals before an account is created. The aim being to ensure the user understands what the instance is about and for administration to ensure the user is the right fit. It’s only an issue of manpower of you’re trying to be a .world style instance, the biggest instance around.
I think that goal however is counter to federation on principle. Large instances create moderation problems and lack any real culture or cohesion as a result. Finding ways to encourage smaller but more numerous instances I think would go a long way to tackle moderation issues.
Right now, defederating is the only real way to avoid these problematic instances. Which at times can be like using a sledge hammer to cut a cake. If instance A has a community (1) explicitly brigading Instance B, there is no real way to quarantine users who are from A and active in community (1), you have to either ban each individual you come across or defederate the instance.
It might be more interesting to provide tools to allow for selective defederation. For example, preventing an instance from federating votes; A means of rate limiting an instances comments; Blocking post creation by users from a given instance; Read only federation settings.
Obviously this is limited by what activitypub is capable of, but I can’t imagine these ideas are impossible.
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