Meshtastic has terrible defaults (every node rebroadcasts everything, every node sends telemetry), which makes sense in the backwoods but not anywhere close to civilisation.

This, combined with the 10% duty cycle limitation on the used frequencies is the main issue, I believe. Once the 10% are used up, a node basically has to go dead until it falls below 10% again. And with lots of messages about battery levels and other telemetry being sent and relayed, those 10% get used up fast.