Asklemmy

I was just wondering the same thing and also noticed that many posts will have a lot of boosts but little favorites.

I favorite to show that I appreciate the post and maybe increase its algorithm ranking. I boost to allow my followers to see it and maybe other people in my instance. Although I get the feeling sometimes that boosting kind of feels redundant so I try not to boost other boosts unless it's something that I think I'd absolutely beyond.

Point number 1 for sure.

Favoriting/liking is especially a good thing to do with photo posts, as pixelfed emphasizes likes over boosts and I think a lot of photographers and artists appreciate likes more than your average poster.

I didn't know that favourites factor into the trending algorithm. Good to know.

I treat it as a like button.

Whenever you like, honestly. It's mostly a nice acknowledgment to the poster that you appreciated their post. Unlike commercial social media it's not sending out anything to your followers that you interacted with it (at least last I checked).

I think many people boost more than favorite because it functions a little similarly in regards to acknowledgment, with the bonus that it helps share the post to others which is even more relevant in federated networks than on centralized platforms.

If I like or agree with something, I favourite it, if I want my followers to see it, or think that my followers will like it, I’ll favourite it.

Favorite = read receipt, boost = like. It's not an absolute rule but it's in the ballpark.

Quite agree with point number 1, moreover the fact that those you re following boost everything they like tends to cause a kind of "spam", I think developers should dissociate the Boost button from the "Like" button.

I do it pretty much the same as you actually! It's always kinda hard to tell what other people are doing though. Since my instance is kinda small, I barely see a tiny fraction of whatever total boosts/favorites a post has unless i click through to the orignal.