There’s absolutely no reason why every action I make on the fediverse ahould be saved in plaintext in a thousand different places so that a person can be protected from seeing a largely inconsequential negative number on a UI.

Extend this logic to actual comments and ask yourself how quickly this would descend into 4chan.

Whether you like it or not, a vote is a much expression as any type of reply. Why is it that a button that says “I dislike this post” should be protected while a comment saying the exact same thing should not?