similar boat here: what I’ve noticed is that, on your instance, 'foreign' toots will only show the favourites coming from your instance. So, if 3 people from your instance favourited a toot that has 1500 favs total, you will only see 3 next to the star
this isn’t true for boosts, and I don’t know what causes the difference there. Its probably something to do with an incomplete federation (either because of blocks or simply because your server isn’t aware of all the others; I’ve noticed that the difference is much larger now that I’m on a smaller instance with less connections), but I’m not sure
for toots coming from other people on your instance, you will see the full count on both favs and boosts
honestly, you’re right. I still worry that it could encourage an attitude of abled people not caring about alt text, because "oh well AI’s gonna do it anyway, who cares!", but, really, abled people already don’t care about alt text, so…
to be faiiiiiiiir, the way they’re going about it is very reasonable. i’d rather have no AI but, if i had to have it, i’d rather have that than anything else.
you’ll have a different tone of voice when the world gets hit with the Cauliflower Flu /s