citrea were already going to do a combination of witness stuffing and small OP_RETURN. they were fully ready to do this and could do it today even if the 80 byte soft limit were instead a consensus rule.
they got asked specifically to put everything in OP_RETURN instead and not do any witness stuffing, since this would be the less polluting option. they were not going to switch to the less polluting option until they were given reason to believe that it wouldn't propagate any slower than the more polluting option.
