Asklemmy

I treat it as a like button.

Whenever you like, honestly. It's mostly a nice acknowledgment to the poster that you appreciated their post. Unlike commercial social media it's not sending out anything to your followers that you interacted with it (at least last I checked).

I think many people boost more than favorite because it functions a little similarly in regards to acknowledgment, with the bonus that it helps share the post to others which is even more relevant in federated networks than on centralized platforms.

Point number 1 for sure.

Favoriting/liking is especially a good thing to do with photo posts, as pixelfed emphasizes likes over boosts and I think a lot of photographers and artists appreciate likes more than your average poster.

I didn't know that favourites factor into the trending algorithm. Good to know.

I was just wondering the same thing and also noticed that many posts will have a lot of boosts but little favorites.

I favorite to show that I appreciate the post and maybe increase its algorithm ranking. I boost to allow my followers to see it and maybe other people in my instance. Although I get the feeling sometimes that boosting kind of feels redundant so I try not to boost other boosts unless it's something that I think I'd absolutely beyond.

Favorite = read receipt, boost = like. It's not an absolute rule but it's in the ballpark.

Quite agree with point number 1, moreover the fact that those you re following boost everything they like tends to cause a kind of "spam", I think developers should dissociate the Boost button from the "Like" button.

I do it pretty much the same as you actually! It's always kinda hard to tell what other people are doing though. Since my instance is kinda small, I barely see a tiny fraction of whatever total boosts/favorites a post has unless i click through to the orignal.

If I like or agree with something, I favourite it, if I want my followers to see it, or think that my followers will like it, I’ll favourite it.