Downvotes seem to work fine in small niche communities without much politics and whose focus is truth-seeking about their topic. But not so much in larger poli

Downvotes seem to work fine in small niche communities without much politics and whose focus is truth-seeking about their topic. But not so much in larger politically charged communities. In the former, the community members tend to use downvotes as they should, to hide spam and trash comments, while remaining open to new or unpopular ideas that are well-reasoned and presented. But in the latter, downvotes are too often abused to suppress ideas the majority disagree with, even if well-reasoned or presented. In that context, I find a better combination is having a "flag" button instead of downvote. Flag makes it clearer that the purpose is to flag spam, misinformation, or troll speech, rather than merely things you disagree with.