View count on steemit?

Hi,

I recently noticed that there is the eye icon on the post. But what does it show? Does it show how many people opened the post?

Check this screenshot from a recent post of jerrybanfield:

Here the eye icon shows a count of 146. But upvotes is way higher with 551. How can this be? Are these all upvote bots? I'm interested in the calculation of the views for further data analysis. Can this also be found in the blockchain?

Thanks for reading.

J