If they were used as they were originally intended which was 'only downvote spam, flamebait, and other content that objectively doesn't belong there' ie not as a 'disagree' button it would have been fine but in practice nobody ever used it like that even in the olden days of Reddit. I reckon BeeHaw made the right call by disabling them.

Completely agree. At first, I though that the Reddit's voting system is great, as it aims to be somewhat similar to the approach Stack Overflow has taken, with actually helpful answers ending up at the top... which does not apply to what Reddit is, which is a forum, which is a bunch of people sharing opinions most of the time, and voting on that has never been a great idea.

Hitting an upvote or a downvote is a very basic type of engagement, a way of expressing something without having to say anything. And it's not doing much good to a forum-like platform. I've been trying to find places that don't have any vote systems, akin to the old-school forums, but I wasn't able to find anything that fit my taste or activity preferences (feel free to point to some if you know any).