Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon shoutout from Lifehacker: The Four Best Reddit Alternatives

Depends on the instance. Lemmy.One has downvoting turned off, for example.

(edit) Also, there are differences between posts and stories/blogs on the fediverse. On the stories/blogs you get an option to favorite/boost instead of upvote or downvote.
And since Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon all deal with it in slightly different ways, maybe they just got confused.

as a longtime mastodon user, tech articles about the fediverse are often very confused and under researched. it’s like tech reporters take one look at the websites and their brains shut off- if they ever even looked at them to begin with.