That's not the only reason for turning off downvotes... I'm a musician, and have dealt before with competing musicians downvoting me in hopes of driving my videos below theirs. Or occasionally someone can share a video publicly and initial response is based on brigading or just not well received. The display of lots of downvotes before views are properly accumulated can cause bias towards the content. Things were just fine when creators had the control over whether or not to show dislikes.

Many creators use Youtube for different purposes. Youtube does a big injustice because they don't fairly separate content based on the type of entity that's posting content enough (i.e. an indie music producer versus a big industry music company or indie vlogger living in their parent's house versus a well funded TV news channel).