Where does Lemmy store upvotes, downvotes, and replies?

Tehhund@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 144 points –

Does ActivityPub send those to other instances, or does ActivityPub only send the original post and the rest (upvotes, downvotes, replies) are stored only on the original server where the post was made?

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Posts and comments are federated (synchronised). Upvotes are actually a bit of a fudge, they are actually 'Favourites' if considered from an activity pub (e.g. Mastodon) perspective, and yes favourites are also federated.
Downvotes don't exist in activity pub and, as a result, they do not federate between instances.
At least that is my understanding.

Downvotes do federate, but it uses protocol extensions to do it. So the downvotes won't federate to Mastodon, but it does for Lemmy and I think Kbin too

Votes federate with standard Like and Dislike activities which are part of Activitypub. It's just that some platforms like Mastodon can't handle Dislikes.

Can't handle by choice I'd guess. Given the format of individuals following individuals rather than topics in communities it doesn't make much sense for a person to follow someone only to downvote/dislike their comments.