What does it default to? Google+bing+DDG?

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.

it’s as good or better than

It’s only as good as the search engines you select. Which ones have you selected?

Exactly.

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.

Pretty much need to self-host it to customize it.

we can get random experts chiming in about interesting topics in an organic way

1. In my experience, many of the people claiming to be experts on reddit are spreading misinformation. This goes for Twitter too, and probably most other large social media sites. People love to be seen as an authority on a topic.
2. Reddit is anything but organic, and is getting worse and worse in this regard.

There’s a github issue requesting this feature.

I haven’t observed that on Lemmy or Mastodon.

I block politics subs and have never had an issue with lemmy.ml. All the issues I see are related to politics.

It used to be like that, but now a single reddit mod can archive any modmail, which generally prevents other mods from seeing it.