I don't know that I agree with the parent post equivalence of "bug reports == force" but I think there is a point to be made that this wasn't just people speaking poorly or offering criticism. There is a real difference between posting your criticism on a platform you control and filling up the issue tracker used by the project. There is an aspect of coercion in that the maintainer has to choose between expending effort to combat the flood of unwanted issues or abandon the use of the issue tracker. They can't just decide to ignore the criticism.

Re. "The author of the package didn't force their code onto the users," it's not really a straw man. People are arguing that the author has moral responsibility for their use of his code. That ignores the fact that they actively chose to use his code. The only way the author would be morally responsible for their use of his code is if he had forced them to use it somehow. So yes, people are basically arguing this.