It's not 'downvote abuse' if it's working exactly as intended. The community decides what's 'perfectly fine and neutral.' If your comments follow the guidelines, at least they won't get deleted.

This is pretty obviously false? I get downvoted quite frequently on HN for posting comments that go against what people typically think. For instance, I find it quite difficult to discuss the productivity gains of AI because any comment I make saying that AI makes me more productive immediately gets downvotes. I am not making inflammatory comments - my comments with a similar tone about other things that boost my productivity, like Rust or whatever, never get downvoted.

How does that make it “obviously false”? The community doesn’t want to hear about how AI isn’t working for people on every AI article. That’s the current balance of votes in the community.