> Perhaps people have ideas they'd like to discuss, but don't want to risk "losing points" because the idea may be unpopular. I know that I have personally experienced this, and stopped myself from expressing an idea because I've been pretty sure it wouldn't be popular.

This is a problem with your mindset, not the HN system. You should not place significant concern on collecting Internet karma. I currently have over 18,000 karma, and I happily and regularly have expressed thoughts and opinions that get me -4'd. (Basically, as low as you can go on a given comment.) Doing so has not hurt me in any meaningful capacity, or even, obviously, in a meaningless HN karma capacity. Post unpopular views.

I'm mostly aware that a certain crowd will downvote anytime I point out that Section 230 should be repealed, that we'd all be better off as a society if Google stopped existing as a website and corporate entity tomorrow, or that unlimited data is a bad thing for ISPs to offer, etc. Sometimes I am surprised when I make a comment I expect to be unpopular, and it ends up somewhat popular!

The problem you run into is that many people feel that a comment they disagree with is low quality. Encouraging flagging over downvotes would actually increase censorship: Instead of downvoting, users would flag a lot more comments, and they'd be more likely to be hidden by the site.