What does "reduce" mean for an article, and how do I use it?

postscarce@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 2 points –

On an article I see: boosts (x) | reduces (x) | favourites (x)

What does "reduces" mean, what effect does it have, and how does a user reduce a post?

I see the link to boost a post, and I see "more" but this doesn't contain a "reduce" link.

20

"reduce" is probably just a bit of a language mishap from a non-native speaker.

It means "downvote" (the arrow down).
The arrow up is "favourite" (essentially, upvote).
These two control the popularity of the post in the Threads feed (and I think both of them count towards "active")

"Boost" is equivalent to Twitters "re-tweet" function - it's a Microblog-thing. I can, for example, see this post from my Mastodon account and I could "boost" it to my followers there.

Yes, sure that makes sense. But now we have up and downvote, and boost and reduce.

We don't?
There's just 3 interactions

Up Arrow (favourite)
Down Arrow (reduce)
boost (reblog)

That does not seem to match. I see 4 independent actions with 4 independent counters here.

Where do you see four?

picture

You've double counted down and reduces, those are the same thing. Up is favorites, boosts is... boosts. That's three items at the bottom under activity, with two of them also being shown as arrows up top.

Activity is just an aggregate of the others.

There's up-vote (favourites), down-vote (reduces), and boosts, each of which are activities.

What's the 4th one and how do I interact with it?
Can you post a screenshot?

Favorites and Boosts effectively move a post up the list to be seen more. Boosts also increase a users reputation while reduces decrease it. Favorites do nothing for your reputation, but the dev for kbin says he will change it so favorites and reduces are the driving factors. He may change the terms too.