if someone isn't linking in the right format, I'll be kicked out of my instance and suddenly I can't comment anymore

there's probably browser extensions to help

Indeed, there are. You want Violentmonkey + Lemmy Universal Link Switcher. Best way to avoid accidentally leaving your home instance.

Lemmy Universal Link Switcher, or LULs for short, scans all links on all websites, and if any link points to a Lemmy instance that is not your main/home instance, it rewrites the link so that it instead points to your main instance.