I'm not seeing that option anywhere. Nor does it allow me to change the "weight". I found a github discussion saying it should show up after you save the settings, but I tried that on two instances and didn't get any unique URL.
Ah, I found it under the "cookies" tab. Needs to be more obvious IMO.
I checked it out, but most of the public instances I looked at use google + bing. I think I only came across one that used Mojeek, but they deranked it so google results were still at the top.
Yeah you can customize them -- if you never clear your cookies.
Unfortunately, I haven't observed that. There seem to be many people on Lemmy who go out of their way to be antagonistic to other Lemmy users. Which includes downvote brigading, as the OP said.
The problems would only get exacerbated if more of them migrate over here, that’s the issue.
I doubt that it would make Lemmy significantly worse. I've already had to block nearly a hundred lemmy communities for containing the "mindless trash" that is abundant on reddit. The reality is that most people aren't smart and don't want to browse and participate in intellectual content. They want to mindlessly scroll through endless memes. I have not observed that people on lemmy are overall more intelligent than people on reddit.
Gmail has a "send feedback" button on most pages. Submit complaints there.