Yes, the first Starlink satellites were horrible for light pollution, especially during orbit raising. However Starlink has taken measures to mitigate this. They've added an shade to darken the satellites and they've modified their orbit raising path to avoid reflecting as much sunlight back to earth.
Starlink's goal is to be invisible to the naked eye when in final orbit. They're not quite that dark during orbit raising, but they're a lot better than they were 6 months ago. Orbit raising takes a couple of months for 1/3rd of the satellites in each launch.
Another advantage of Starlink is that they are in super low orbits. This means that they are shadowed by the Earth except for the half hour after sunset and the half hour before sunrise. There is so much refracted sunlight during these times that they aren't useful star gazing times for most.
Starlink's competitors (OneWeb, Kuiper) have none of these advantages. Kuiper may add some, but none are announced yet. They have no sunshades, are cubical so orbit raising perturbations don't help much, and are in higher orbits so are visible during the darker periods of the night.