To me the way it’s better is that it’s more free in a sense. For one it does not even attempt to limit what software you use for browsing it, but also if you very dislike certain people/content, like-minded people can host their server without losing access to most of the other content, while being able to block the unwelcome instances and users.
Downvote brigading is not a technical problem though, but a people problem, isn’t it? So the solution against that would be stricter moderation, maybe banning a few more instances (but that’s not really a good solution unless it’s very extreme), and making people downvote less.
Hmm, thinking about it, maybe a daily per-user “downvote budget” would be an interesting experiment? To see if it would be effective. Or with an other interval, but still not too long, and maybe partly connected to account active days (not account age).