Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
You don’t query another instance’s database.
When your instance is federated with another, your instance will sync a local copy of threads and interactions from that instance.
You then query your own database and instantly have access to everyone else’s interaction data.
Wow. Off-topic but that sounds inefficient for very large networks of instances. Sounds like the federation is doing more that it should.
Is there some place to learn about the federation protocol?