After years of using Feeder on my phone and some other random stuff on my laptop, I switched to FreshRSS on my server and the big thing is everything stays synced. My read and stared articles are all where they should be. I run fluent reader on all my devices and tailscale keeps me always connected to my reader so I can save articles on my phone when I don’t have time to read them then read them when I get home on my laptop or tablet.
Preemptive defeding I think is bad. You can’t convince people to move to better options if you never have a chance to interact with them in the first place. Obviously there may be reason to defed in the future but to do it prematurely is a mistake that will isolate the fediverse in a way that is uninviting to new people unfamiliar with the space.