Nah, upvoters are stupid and will often upvote anything with a pretty picture regardless of whether it fits a sub, regardless of whether it's been reposted 50 trillion times, and regardless of whether it's complete bullshit. Mods absolutely should delete a lot of posts even if they're popular.

My number 1 desire for a reddit replacement is some sort of meta restrictions on voting. Ban people from voting for a post if they're not subbed. Ban people who upvote bad content from voting in your sub. The more and more time I spend on reddit and the fediverse, the more I'm convinced that upvotes as implemented are a broken, shitty way to determine what content I see.