In theory these comments could be auto-collapsed or even hidden by default, but yes, this would escalate flamewars. I think it's often courteous to explain why

In theory these comments could be auto-collapsed or even hidden by default, but yes, this would escalate flamewars. I think it's often courteous to explain why people are being downvoted (and even more courteous to generally not downvote people simply because you disagree with their opinion), but a lot of the most downvoted comments are very obviously low effort, trolling, spamming or on divisive subjects and I'm not sure a comment from each downvoter adds value there