The mechanism for how it works is that as a remote instance sends in it's downvote count, Beehaw immediately drops the message without modifying the database. Part of this exchange is an expected response of the total updated downvotes. However, Beehaw sends back "0" and the remote instance knows it can't be zero, so it treats it's local count with higher validity.

Essentially, this all ends up meaning that what ssm will see is the total of all downvotes from users on their own instance, and nothing else. This might be just their own downvote, especially being on a smaller instance. But I've seen lemmy.world users be confused about it bc the count they see is say, -5. Have been told my instance obviously has them enabled 😅

Remote instances don't communicate their vote tally's with each other for a third instance's post.