...usually are posting very controversial topics

Not from what I've seen.

People have been heavily downvoted for suggesting that "I tried veganism and it didn't seem to work well for me". Others have been downvoted for having a full downvote meter (you're not downvoting enough so you're not doing your part to protect the community standards)!!!

If you scare off all the carnivores and nice people who don't believe in downvoting, what the heck is steem going to look like?

Can't they just use the MUTE function if they don't want to read someone's stuff?