I saw a comment about a week ago that said the displayed number of subscribers/upvotes displayed is the count for people on your instance. Essentially meaning that if an instance displays that it has 15 subscribers it actually only means there’s 15 subscribers from my personal instance (vlemmy.net in my case) and not overall from across the Fediverse. Same for upvotes.
Is that in any way accurate? Or am I totally off base on this one? The only reason I ask is because I’ve noticed the subscriber counts on some communities seem very low vs. the amount of engagement.
Yes, this is true for subscribers. There are websites you can find that will show you total subscribers for a community if you are curious.
I’m pretty sure this can’t be true for upvotes though. I regularly see posts that have more upvotes than there are accounts on my local instance.
The only reason I ask is because I’ve noticed the subscriber counts on some communities seem very low vs. the amount of engagement.
This could also happen because a lot of people are browsing All, and not subscribing.
Only the case for subscribers. Upvotes/downvotes are shown from all instances that YOUR instance is linked with.
It’s true for subscribers - you can compare your view, with the result on something like browse.feddit.de or lemmyverse.net, which give the total count.
Dunno about upvotes though, that must be universal, surely?
Votes counts seem to always be in a state of syncing/flux. The vote counts on personal instance are always significantly different than on lemmy.world.
