But which upvote type - boosts or votes? Why do boosts exist at all then, if they don't "boost" anything? I thought I remembered (granted it's been a couple of years since I migrated from Reddit to kbin.social) that it was boosts, and it was upvotes that existed but were irrelevant? (If so, but not anymore, then how and why was that changed?)

Not that you need to answer every one of these - I'm just sharing my confusion, which many people seem to also share.