When discussing game design, these “likes” isn’t health for a discussion.
The “like” button is not what isn’t healthy in your game design threads.
It’s not news channel, so “likes” is not health.
Likes show agreement with a comment, without having to flood the thread with additional comments just saying they agree. There isn’t anything inherently unhealthy in publicly agreeing with the opinion of someone else.
Your problem is that you’re making statements on game design as if they are objective fact, while never having made a game yourself, and people who have made games are disagreeing with your statements and getting lots of likes on their posts. Censoring people isn’t going to resolve that problem.
I clicked like to Joe’s latest comment because I agree with him.
A non-text agreement functionality is a great asset for any type of forum.
Furthermore, could you define what is “healthy” in this context?
I think this sums it up nicely.