Only seeing how many others agree with someone does still lend a decent amount to the discussion I think. It’s way starker to see someone still on 1 when the person they’re arguing with is on 10 in my opinion.

I think this is the same problem, though. You are being influenced by how other people interpreted the comments before you've even read them properly yourself.

I wonder also whether it would be interesting if votes were public like on Facebook for example. Though I don't think disabling downvotes solves the problem. It makes it easier to agree and harder to disagree. You'll still be mostly exposed to things that the majority of people agree with, this not challenging the majority opinion. Looking at how most social media work, aiming to keep you on the platform longer to see more ads the votes make sense, see more stuff you agree with, happier you are, longer you stay. I don't see why we need that here, I'm not currently aware of any for-profit instances (there is threads I guess). It was probably brought over from Reddit without much thought.

Edit: I'll also point out that the voting system on the Stack Exchange sites is different as those sites generally cover objective topics (it does fall apart in some cases), while here pretty much everything is political.