Yes, but then you can have malicious servers sending fake numbers without other server operators being able to check whether this is at all plausible.
(It's still possible for malicious servers to send fake votes, but server operators can see which users they are stated to originate from, then block that server if that looks like it's doing that. At least that is my understanding.)
Yes, after all other servers need this information in order to prevent double voting, you can't just have servers sending each other information "somebody upvoted this" and also tell when servers are allowing users to vote more than once.
So upvotes and downvotes aren't actually private, never have been, some servers may display them publicly even if most don't.
absolutely, e.g. right now
No, although XMPP is similarly federated to the fediverse. If by fediverse you mean ActivityPub, then XMPP and IRC are both much older than AP.
and is saying that it somehow means Facebook owns it
owns what?
It does mean that Facebook owns the copyright to a software component that TikTok (apparently) also uses. They licensed it under a free and open source software license, so anybody (including TikTok, including you, including me) can download it and use it as part of their own software. It does not mean Facebook owns TikTok, nor that Facebook owns any other piece of software this is used in.
If you want to see more examples of similar notices: if you are using Firefox, enter about:license into your URL bar. If you are using Chrome, enter chrome://credits/ there. You'll find that these browsers, like many pieces of software nowadays, rely heavily on open source components developed by third parties.
I used to read RSS feeds from Thunderbird a long time ago, but that required me to set them up again on every reinstallation and every device, so I eventually stopped doing that.
Nowadays I read RSS feeds on Mastodon. There's a service https://rss-parrot.net/ that converts any RSS feed into a fediverse account, so you get RSS feed updates into your feed along with everything else you follow there. Of course it would be even better if blogs and news sites just posted directly on the fediverse, but not all of them do.
your link doesn't work, here's what you meant to link to: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/germany-and-genocide
(Also this will probably be deleted on this sub because it's not a link to an actual news source.)
Most things are in German, but if something isn't translated to German yet or I can't be bothered to change it from English, it doesn't bother me much to use it in English either.
You realize this thing right here is social media too, right? :o
Spain (Ceuta, Melilla, Canary Islands, etc.) and Portugal (Madeira) too then, but most of these countries' territory is in Europe.
I hardly ever check how old anyone's account is. I try to be nice to everyone regardless of who they are, and discuss issues rather than posters.