@dcx@Annoyed_Crabby lol i think because kbin was written as being both link aggregation like Lemmy but also microblogging like Mastodon, Calckey, Akkoma etc. And before Reddit, the expectation must be because the main audience will be bloggers who'll be visiting from federated spaces (chewah cam star trek). So upvote maps to likes; boosts is reblogs; downvotes go nowhere (since blogging platforms don't have these).
It's memang quite interpretative dance la - Calckey (and all the *keys) can give emoji reacts but it just shows up as likes on my Masto fork.
That's why I thought i better bring it up. It semi looks like Reddit but backend lain sikit.