Using and navigating this site would be a huge pain in the ass without them.
I can understand getting rid of downvotes to reduce hostility, but removing votes as a whole is just a bad idea. Effort posts would immediately get buried under shitposts that only took a few seconds (Not saying those are inherently bad ofc., but there needs to be a balance).
Every post would just turn into a contest of "Who sees it and comments first", which would suck. I unironically do not want to return to the "First!" era of commenting.
Oftentimes I like a post but either don't have the time/energy/desire to give a thoughtful response on what I liked about it, or I have literally zilch to add beyond "cool, I like what you posted", and in those cases I really appreciate being able to just click a button that, however insidious it might as a media institution, lets me communicate that their thoughts were valuable to me without disproportionate investment on my part.
Building off of that I think it's possible that removing upbears might make the site feel more negative, even if broad user sentiments haven't actually changed. People are more likely on average to complain about something they dislike than praise something they like, so removing the easy way to show concurrence or approval means the one person who REALLY hated my take is going to be more visible than the twenty people who liked it well enough but didn't want to comment about it. I think that would be bad ;_;