With a dislike counter at least that could signal something is amiss with these videos, but now you just see thumbs up everythings cool guys and the comments can be moderated by the uploader to remove anything negative.
Downvotes hurt the feelings and egos of enough people with the power/leverage to get it changed. Particularly: politicians, corporations, and youtube executives themselves (e.g. Youtube's Rewind videos getting trashed with mass downvotes.)
Thank you for reminding me that viewers can't even vote down to try to inform others of how bad those videos are. YT's leadership needs to be replaced.
Still don't understand why they removed it.