So my understanding is that non-local communities receive interactions from other instances, then the host instance relays those interactions to all subscribed instances.

It’s also my understanding that when an instance disables downvoting, it also doesn’t relay downvotes onward.

So how do I see this?

This is the scenario:

  1. A hexbear.net user posts to a hexbear.net community [downvotes disabled], which gets relayed to all subscribed instances like mine (thelemmy.club) and mander.xyz, etc.
  2. A mander.xyz user sees it and downvotes it, which is sent to Hexbear
  3. Hexbear receives the downvote and discards it (or at least, I always assumed so)

If it had been one of the local users of thelemmy.club I could understand seeing it, as it would be recorded in our local database. But how am I seeing a foreign downvote on a Hexbear community?

  • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    17 hours ago

    When downvotes are disabled on an instance; they’re just not displayed to that instances users. Nor is the downvote button displayed (so those users can’t downvote).

    The instance will still receive and track downvotes from outside instances; showing the data to other instances that don’t hide it. The data is still there, it’s just that the instance admins chose to not display them to their own users.

    • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      17 hours ago

      track downvotes from outside instances

      No, Lemmy just forwards the downvote to the community’s subscribers, so other instances receive them. The downvote is not written to the db on instances with it disabled.

      • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        I don’t think that’s true, just because I’m pretty sure even users that aren’t explicitly subscribed still see the downvotes. I could be wrong 🤷🏻

        Either way, the data is still there and is passed around to those that choose to see it. Disabling downvotes doesn’t actually prevent items being downvoted, it just hides them from those that don’t want to see it.

        • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.ukEnglish
          4·
          16 hours ago

          You don’t have to be subscribed to see activities in a community (including downvotes) but someone on you instance does for the community know to send the activities to that instance.

          Disabling downvotes doesn’t actually prevent items being downvoted, it just hides them from those that don’t want to see it.

          Disabling donvotes in the instance setting does prevent them being recorded on that instance. You can see the code here.