The status of a halakhic custom

Have a good week, Rabbi,
In Tractate Chulin, page 6, page 2, it is written:
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Zeruz, son of Rabbi Meir’s father-in-law, testified before Rabbi Aram that he ate a leaf of a vegetable in Beit Shean, and Rabbi permitted the entire Beit Shean by his side. His brothers and his father’s house joined in on him, saying to him: Where your fathers and your fathers practiced a prohibition, will you practice a permit in it? He demanded of them this reading: And the bronze serpent that Moses made, for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and he called it Nehushtan, did Asa come and not burn it, did Jehoshaphat come and not burn it? And did not Asa and Jehoshaphat burn all the idolatry in the world! Rather, a place that his fathers allowed him to circumcise himself in, and I too, a place that my fathers allowed me to circumcise myself in. Hence, for a scholar who said a matter of halakhic law, he is not to be tainted.
What lessons do you think can be drawn from this story, and in particular what do you think the lessons are regarding the status of a halakhic custom?
Apparently, to the best of my understanding, from what is said in the Holin, we can learn that the status of the halakhic custom is not so binding, and where we have a reason to change a halakhic custom, we should do so, whether by changing the wording or the meaning. However, the halakhic arbiters of our time and even of several hundred years before us seem to me to have given a great deal of weight to the halakhic custom, and only where they had very good reasons to change did they change the halakhic custom, and even that usually by changing the meaning, but in changing the wording, here it takes almost a bat kol to change the halakhic custom.
For example, the Beit Yosef in its introduction wrote:
“And if in some countries they have practiced prohibitions on some things, even though we rule to the contrary, they will maintain their custom because they have already accepted the words of the sage who forbids them, and it is forbidden for them to practice a permissible practice in the chapter where they practiced it (Pesachim 5:1)”
Although it is perhaps possible to understand the Bible that the entire obligation to continue to adhere to the custom of prohibition stems from the fear that the peoples of the lands will come to permit outright prohibitions when they see that a wise man practices what is considered a prohibition to them (as is stated in Pesachim, please), whereas where this fear does not exist, it is permissible to abandon the custom of prohibition.
Best regards,