I'd say it's deserved, not FUD. Nvidia did improve in some ways, but it's still way too heavy into blob even in case you plan to use it in the future with nvk. Nouveau / nova developers explained that Nvidia pushed a lot more into their firmware than AMD, turning the kernel driver into more of a shim than an actual driver. That's already a big downside.
It's a tradeoff, and if you're not doing any fancy-pants CUDA work then it's a pretty big one. But most people are already using these blob-heavy drivers on Windows, so switching that same system to Linux is not a huge downgrade in terms of usability or stability. It isn't recommended for new Linux PCs, but it's not a dealbreaker for people switching OSes (anymore).