Bad, but unfortunately common take.

Upvotes and downvotes are not meaningless when you’re trying to find actual information and a legitimate helpful comment is buried or disregarded because that account is being targeted by a downvote bot brigade. That actively hurts the community.

It’s the same reason people are complaining about YouTube removing visible dislikes on videos and why the Return YT Dislikes extension is so important. It’s often (not always) a quick way to see if a video will be worth watching, especially when it comes to how-to/repair videos.

If I’m on a motorcycle community and I’m asking about what’s the best type of front brakes on my particular year and model of a bike and I see a comment with a ton of downvotes, it’s kind of a red flag to me to examine that comment more carefully and maybe not take it at face value. There’s a good chance that it’s bad advice.

They're imaginary internet points, but they absolutely serve a purpose and purposefully muddying up this system does do some harm to the platform and its functionality.