I don't think I get your meaning.
People continually see a flag (because that's what it is on the interface they use on steemit) in order to communicate a desire for lower payouts as a negative attack on them and/or their content. To not recognize this would be to not recognize the social norms of the community. It doesn't matter what the founders/whales say or do, what matters is how people who are flagged interpret that action. This goes back to my Thumper comment (I was making a Bambi reference there) along the lines of, "If it's not nice, don't do it." If you think flagging long form content with high rewards will somehow save Steemit or make it more popular, I guess I'm not seeing it. Seems to me to bring more negativity which will keep people away.
My comment was a reference to the fact that there are multiple considerations and reducing it to a single one (positivity vs. negativity) is taking things too far. As you are probably aware I have been a champion of positivity as an effective approach to community-building for a long time, and I remain so, but this does not mean that it overrides everything else. There is an evolution of awareness of the need for downvoting as well as upvoting, as can be seen not only in the statements and actions of the founders and developers but also in the recent (and long considered and debated) change to add "disagreement on rewards" to the flagging UI.