I think that is true just like the question of whether posts made, federated, then deleted would remain outside the instance. I can imagine the server drain if it had to recursively search through all history everywhere that’s connected to do such things. A refederated server, or even a newly online server simply shouldn’t spike the network with pulls from weeks, months, years back.

This is why Kbin has the boost button in addition to an upvote. That’s being debated on if it’s the best way to do it, or if there’s a need for a more integrated way to do the same thing. It basically pushes old content back on the federated “stack” to refresh new views. Perhaps Kbin and Lemmy upvotes should do the same?