@baronvonj@lemmy.world as far as I know, that number shows the number of shares. It is not an indication that you are seeing that post because it was boosted tho.
The thing is, if I follow a user and that user boosts a post from someone I’m not following, that post is supposed to show up in my TL, in the same way as any other Fediverse platform. However that doesn’t happen. I tested it: on Pixelfed home TL you only see posts from users you follow, you don’t see boosts of posts made by users you’re not following. And since the purpose of boosting is to let you know new people, that’s a really big bummer

@3dmvr@lemm.ee well this is a post from a Sharkey instance, I see your post because I follow this community (which appears to me as a user boosting lemmy posts)
Also I’ve already posted on lemmy directly from my instance, I just have to tag the community I want to post into, and I receive replies as well.
It’s not perfect but it’s extremely helpful and cool

@rglullis@communick.news tbh we shouldn’t expect the adoption curve of any Fediverse software to be somewhat similar to the ones of centralised social networks, since Fediverse completely misses the commercial aspect that encourage key users to stay in the platform easing communities to stick to it as well. My guess is that without the action of commercial dynamics, the situation wouldn’t be so different from the jumps-and-losses moments we’re used to