Maybe they feel bullied by the demands?
Seriously, you'd have t be crazy to think that @ned and @dan see Steemit as some kind of fiefdom, and if people do think that then why are they not leaving in droves?
I think it's all a storm in a teacup that'll blow over in a few days and then, possibly, we'll find out the real issue.
Feeling bullied by legitimate request of the community? They should have thought about that before they started this great system ;-)
I hope you're right and it will blow over, but it does demonstrate a flaw in the system we need to address.
As far as people leaving, we may not see that yet, but if this trend continues I'm afraid we'll have a large group of users that no longer, or only marginally, contribute.
There's a fair few I 'd like to see leave or at the very least change their behaviour. :-)
I'm not going to get upset about someone who goes on funded holidays by the places they visit to write reviews about their hosted location. And then re-posts that stuff on steemit but sticks the steemit logo on the pictures to give the pretence of exclusivity. I have no issue with sweetsssj personally what I disliked was the fact she brought over a lot of followers from her other sites and then started hoovering up votes that could have gone to less fortunate hard working minnows and from what little I saw rarely if ever rewarded comments thus spreading some of that good fortune around.
Again, that's just how I feel about the subject. Your view may well be different to mine. :-)