I realize this would lead to modern clients having to set but not use l-tags in queries until wide adoption was achieved. Else they would not see legacy client root events.
There are people not using nostr bc it uses too much data. At some point we have to change this or nostr will always be crippled.
I'm shouting from the roof tops since a long time that relays should charge for querying notes and for keeping queries open. With that, clients would quickly have to adapt and load less or less redundantly. And standards to reduce redundancy in downloads would also naturally follow. Right now, many clients load all events many times from many relays for no reason, just because relays allow it and clients can still somehow handle it.