I have to agree with you. It does create a lot of friction.
When I bought steem originally, I didn't know about all of the social conventions and was self-upvoting. Then I got blacklisted and downvoted to get 0 rewards.
I understood and just created a new account, but it definitely could have caused someone else to just sell and leave.
But I also wonder if doing such a change can have other consequences which we can't think of right now.