That's ridiculous, of course there are downvotes. In fact all it takes is a very small minority to flag something and it goes off the site. This happens all the time.
A flag and a downvote are two very different things. If there were downvotes I'd use them all the time. There are flags and yet I only use them rarely, for spam, or something off topic, or with an editorialized headline, etc.
Flags aren't meant to express dislike, they're meant to express something being inappropriate. Lots of stuff I dislike is appropriate here.
