2 days ago (see 2) I posted something into the !programmer_humor@programming.dev community which got almost 1000 upvotes (see 1) while the user numbers for the last week are at 131 (see 3), this doesn't add up. How can 131 users upvote almost 1000 times?
The number is displayed on the instance the post is on, so it doesn't matter which instance you view it from (or if you're not logged in at all), the number is calculated from the active users who are members of the instance you're viewing.