But which upvote type - boosts or votes? Why do boosts exist at all then, if they don't "boost" anything? I thought I remembered (granted it's been a couple of years since I migrated from Reddit to kbin.social) that it was boosts, and it was upvotes that existed but were irrelevant? (If so, but not anymore, then how and why was that changed?)

Not that you need to answer every one of these - I'm just sharing my confusion, which many people seem to also share.

[–] inkblade@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Upvotes are what lemmy posts are supposed to be ranked by, posts with more upvotes are ranked on the trending pages. While boosts like on Mastodon are for federation, boosting a post pushes it from one instance/network to other instances/networks -- if the booster is one another instance/network.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 8 hours ago

Thank you for the explanation. That seems all the more confusing then to see boosts done for threaded posts in communities, like is that even comparable to microblog emissions or whatever they are called in magazines, or is it a whole other thing.

People want - and demand - simplicity, or else they seek it out even at the expense of remaining on corporate social media.