I think its a trend that is becoming rampant in the crypto world, technologies are complex, are often in investment plans, and values can tank easily so i would say its hard all together to have objective informations, all people who knows or feel interested often have vested interest, and dont want negative points to rise up for not loosing money, as price can very volatile with bad news.

I would not say im scared to speak negtively of steem, but i generally like to make deep study of the matter before to talk about it, and i only have superficial understanding of it yet.

And im not big social media user, i like more old school presentation so the ui fits for me, it has the basics features id use.

But as a developper, i know blockchain tech are more complex than centralized tech, and the industry is still very early, and there is still no silver bullet to solve everything smoothly yet, neither on managment policy, economy, technique, and most tech are still potentially under fragile funding, so i guess it feel bit like walking on eggs when trying to critic it.

why should anyone be criticizing the steemit platform in the first place ?

I'm not really "considering leaving", more just new and not really invested, but the criticism that springs to mind if you're asking for some is that it resembles multi-level marketing or a Ponzi scheme.

Not that SteemIt is a pyramid scheme, mind, but it has enough traits in common that those "posts praising the platform as an expected homage" that you describe always strike me as coming from the same state of mind as people who've been suckered into a multi-level marketing scheme.

I think most other complaints I could come up with would boil down to problems with the ways I've been using the site, so I'll leave it at just that one.