I spent several hours tracing in production (updating the code a dozen times with extra logging) to identify the actual path the lemmy_server code uses for outbound federation of votes to subscribed servers. Major popular servers, Beehaw, Leemy.world, Lemmy.ml [http://Lemmy.ml] - have a large number of instance servers subscribing to their communities to get copies of every post/comment. Comment votes/likes are the most common activity, and it is proposed that during the PERFORMANCE CRISIS that outbound vote/like sharing be turned off by these overwhelmed servers. pull request for draft: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/compare/main...RocketDerp:lemmy_comment_votes_nofed1:no_federation_of_votes_outbound0 [https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/compare/main...RocketDerp:lemmy_comment_votes_nofed1:no_federation_of_votes_outbound0] EDIT: LEMMY_SKIP_FEDERATE_VOTES environment variable