Yes, that's a real issue, but has nothing to do with starter packs.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109694404895541101
If we picture a world with 500M people on Mastodon, the infra design breaks a lot of smaller sites. Conversely, BlueSky's infra choices don't break smaller sites. I do love your focus on what it means for Fediverse to be a better Internet citizen.
"Mastodon only works because it's not popular! Stop making it popular!" is probably not the message we should lead with.