I can't blame them though. Networks of any kind have the particular effect of working the better, the more people are on it. What use is a messenger (cough Signal, Threema) if none of your contacts use them and can be persuaded to install yet-another-network app?

The obvious solution would have been for governments to mandate federation with open standards (e.g. XMPP) early on, but unfortunately most politics decision-makers are dinosaurs who won't understand "federation", much less "API"...