I'd also like to underscore the point there about the _cost_.
Right now mastodon is prohibitively expensive to run in terms of both time and resources. I'd see efforts to reduce this to be a net positive to the fediverse in most situations?
The lessons at large scale don't always apply at small scale and vice versa, but the point remains that right now mastodon is a bit of a trash fire in that regard and it doesn't have to be.