We were hoping that JS will recognize those Ned's promises, but all the signs coming from various communication channels was making us to believe that the whole platform is in danger (more on that in @pfunk's post).
And yes, you are absolutely right, we should enforce those promises in the code (actually at the time of HF14 such code was developed for solely that purpose: decline_voting_rights, however it wasn't ever used).
So after yet another failure of Ned that resulted in Steemit Inc. crisis by the end of 2018, we discussed that once again, unfortunately at that time there were no consensus on enforcing it via code and community decided to trust his words once again, which as we all see now was a grave mistake. And I mean it. It caused the end of Steem as we know it.