Bucky

Thank you for this.

and results are increasingly becoming unusable, especially in the past few years. I can barely find the things I want to search for,

This is one of the most true statements I've read in the past years. Internet search is unusable.

I think it should be generated by participation that is upvoted. If you contribute enough quality stuff, you get one gold to give out. And yeah it should just be gold, and multiple golds would have just one icon, with a number;

Agreed. There is no benefit to the current system, the current behavior for interacting with links on remote instances.

It only leads to confusion and/or a bad user experience.

Have to watch ads before you can put it on is super dystopian.