If core had the same mempool rules as consensus rules it would look more like Libre vs Knots. I'm not necessarily opposed to that but would need to fully consider impacts. Decisions were made by Core at the time to have these filters to try to limit some forms of abuse but it has in turn lead to centralization as people find ways to work around the limits while staying in consensus.
Discussion
They set a mempool limit of 80 but no consensus limit and told everyone the limit was 80.
How is it not malicious to lie to the people who can't read the code and understand it for lack of time or skill.
Now we can never set a consensus limit smaller than their demonstration block without a fork and rollback. They never had the conversation in good faith. Dicks no matter how you feel about the change.