Well this confuses me. I’m only aware of upvotes and downvotes. What do the 4 colors mean? And what do the left and right arrows mean? Arrow size?

An interesting discussion! You’re probably right about most Lemmy instances. But it’s entirely possible that some instances are running a modified version of Lemmy that collects more data. And only those admins will understand why. They could sell it as easily as any company.

You need to trust your service providers or accept what they’re doing.