Like I get it, they don’t want someone torrenting 100tb of data in a day. That bogs things down.

No, that isn’t accurate and isn’t getting it.

All the data caps today are for total cumulative quantity per billing cycle. That is not a reliable method for controlling what actually bogs things down, which is the bandwidth used at any moment (speed).

Limiting bandwidth is also done by most ISPs today, but that’s not what this is asking to change. The data caps are exclusively a way to charge more.

Shouldn’t the pipeline have failed unless the functional tests passed?

Which comment in the issue thread leads you to believe that?

The developer’s closing comment is that it wouldn’t be worth it to implement that feature in Lemmy.

One way would be by implementing features the Lemmy devs have no interest in such as better interoperability with other fediverse platforms. If any added feature turns out to be well received and in demand, it would pressure the others to implement similar.