Actually... it does make a difference in some situations. Just strip the comments and count it as "people affected". Sure - coogle code issues already implement "star"-ing issues, but it's just another indication of "number of less techy people affected".
Also, many people know that, "I want to escalate", shouting, saying you'll sue, writing directly to a person higher up, etc. often can reorder the priority of your complaint... so they do that. Of course it doesn't work that well on the internet. If I got a penny for each issue I needed to handle out of order, because the customer could shout really loud... I'd have a pound maybe ;)
I watched a presentation online by a large software company who used to to do this. They deprecated this as "prioritization by whoever shouts the loudest". Once a crash-bug-reporting system was in place it simply went away, as they had accurate enough data on how many people were affected, and could prioritize based on that. This won't help if it's not a crash bug, but the criticism of "prioritization by whoever shouts the loudest" is still valid.
...I'm actually not getting why this is a bad thing. The people shouting on your crash-bug-reporting system are unhappy enough to go out and yell at you rather than simply grumbling to themselves and continuing to use your program. Doesn't it make sense customer-service-wise to appease those folks who are going to yell about the bugs in your program and negatively influence peoples' opinions?
Also, many people know that, "I want to escalate", shouting, saying you'll sue, writing directly to a person higher up, etc. often can reorder the priority of your complaint... so they do that. Of course it doesn't work that well on the internet. If I got a penny for each issue I needed to handle out of order, because the customer could shout really loud... I'd have a pound maybe ;)