My understanding is that favorites are equivalent to twitter likes, and boosts are equivalent to twitter retweets, but on twitter people like way more then they retweet, so why is it different on mastodon?
I think it is because on Mastodon favorites don’t mean much besides showing some appreciation for the post. On the other hand, the Twitter algorithm would make posts with more likes more visible, but not as much as retweeting. So if you want to make a Mastodon post more visible you have to boost it
Favorites saves them as a favorite. Unless I’m going to want to see that tweet again in the future I don’t generally hit the favorite button.
If I think it’s entertaining I’ll boost it for other people to see. There’s no algorithm sorting things by engagement, so favoriting doesn’t expand visibilty on boosting does that.
Mastodon has a bookmark feature to fulfill this use case.
You can absolutely use favorites this way too but if you ever want to save a comment without the poster knowing bookmarks are the way.
Iirc it’s due to the way federation works. You can see the real number of boosts but the favourites only show the amount from people who are on the same server as you. It’s not reflective of the real number
So, does this also apply to kbin/lemmy?
If a post from lemmy.world shows up on my kbin feed and it has only 30 likes, but on lemmy.world it has 1k likes, I’ll never get to experience the real “popularity” of a post?
I’m not entirely sure and I could be wrong, but I think it was for security/efficiency and was not a popular idea. From what I can gather: in Lemmy all upvotes and downvotes are tied directly to the post so it shouldn’t be an issue here
Mastodon has no algorithm, instead the users determine what spreads - so boosting posts is what helps them be shown to more people.
Favoriting a post on Mastodon doesn’t show it to your followers, so it doesn’t contribute to the “algorithm” the way boosting a post does. But it does tell the creator that you liked their content!
Usually it appears that way (like I was surprised some posts had 0 likes/favourites), but when I click on the post or go to the original source - it shows a higher number.
I just assumed that instances don’t automatically gather likes as readily as boosts.
Because people want that their followers see what theycfound interesting
favorite? on the web ui its marked as “save” likely part of the difference you are seeing.
Favorites are like a nod but not visible beyond the conversation. Boosts make the post available to every one in your timeline. So if you think it’s fun, funny or worth other peoples time you should boost. I usually reserve favoriting for comments on posts I’ve already boosted.
