PSA: Upvote is not an upvote like you are used to (like Reddit) - "Boost" is the Reddit Upvote
Like the title says, if you want to upvote something on KBin, you should use the Boost link, not the upvote button (Why? Don't know...)
The upvote button doesn't seem to do much, but Boost accomplishes what Reddit's upvote did. So if you're looking to encourage a post, use the Boost link.
I believe you are correct about upvotes. To my knowledge, downvotes don’t federate at all (ActivityPub may not support them, for all I know), so what they do here is merely affect reputation points.
Oh interesting, so are downvote counts only reflective of what my individual server has received? I assumed they at least federated between kbin and Lemmy even if the rest of fedi didn't have a way to understand them.