Seeing that you cannot up-vote people that you queue with or friends that you enter with, they are punishing players for being loyal to a group and friends.
No, they're preventing people from abusing the system. OF COURSE you're going to upvote your friends. It doesn't punish you, because you can always run with those people. They don't need an incentive like the turds do. Not haivng to put up with those people is its own reward. The whole point of changes like this is to improve the experience of PUGs in the DF. if you've formed a competent party yourself, it should already be a better experience.

Also, if you could upvote your friends, it would mean that baddies could upvote eachother to compromise the system.