It's definitely from other instances voting on it. For example. I'm on the @kbin.social instance but I'm commenting on your post from @jeemy.jeena.net

Also, this doesn't really have to do with your point but it's interesting none-the-less, it's really hard to keep view count numbers accurate when you've got multiple servers involved. The view count is accurate and every view is being counted, but any time you look at it, it's not exactly correct. If you think about how each server might get a view count update from the server at different times, and then add the views that only it sees to the view count, and then when it goes to add it's view counts to the central count and get a new updated number there may have been dozens of other server that have updated the view count at various times between then and now.

It all gets very complicated but I think it's kind of neat that a view count number can be accurately kept track of and yet every time you look at it, it's not exactly correct.