Yeah, this is simply how federating works, but the user experience of seeing the same thread across multiple subs, across multiple instances, does not make for a great user experience.

The other troublesome thing is that I feel like I'm spending an increasing amount of time every visit blocking little unwanted one-off communities. It was also a challenge on Reddit too, but here you've got the additional complication of each instance spinning up its own multiverse of madness.

I saw it once. But then again, I'm not subbed to multiple reddit communities and then bitching about it

This happened to my on reddit, too. I diversified/added interests and it was less of a concern.

You're acting like if you sub to physics, science and astronomy, you shouldn't get news about gravity waves. Some of this is you.

You'll see the same thing over there. The same article posted to multiple subs.

Just block the bots. It's not difficult to fix your problem in two seconds.