People fear what they don't understand and Steemit's 'business model', for lack of a better term, is completely different from the standard advertising model. So, people start shouting "scam!"

I'm not too familiar with how the distribution was done apart from reading some old posts and how there was some screw up. I think the distribution has become a lot more spread out over the two years with more 'dolphins' to spread the love around :)