As you've said, it's an option as in optional and anyone who doen't want to disable likes can have those enabled.
Me, I have the like button set to disabled on Semisol's Snort fork with a 1 sat default zap amount set to "like" notes.
Discussion
It’s even been the default setting (“reactions off”) on main Snort since end of January but nobody batted an eye over it until now 🤷♂️