>the more people who use it, the more robust and far-reaching and reliable it gets.

I was under the opposite impression, that meshtastic's whole problem is that it doesn't scale well at all.

Meshtastic uses naive flooding, which is fine for sparse networks (ie you and your three friends out hiking), but which doesn’t scale well at all.

I'm genuinely interested in learning more about the shortcomings of meshtastic if you have a link to share. Groups like the Anarchist Black Cross seem really supportive of the tech for disaster situations. Even Benn Jordan claimed it played an important role during the floods in NC