A few years back, I ran Yggdrasil (poorly) over LoRa using a then-available experimental Meshtastic IP tunnel. Reticulum supports text-only websites (in the NomadNet software), and I have tested how these load over LoRa links. Loading time on a single hop (lab conditions) isn't half bad, honestly.
My point in telling you this is that much of the mesh networking space is proof of concepts and poor executions, which often must happen first before elegant solutions to real problems can form.
My 2¢ on why Meshtastic is so popular (despite its many flaws) is because the original developer decided to implement a solution for a real use case.
My 2¢ on why Meshtastic is so popular (despite its many flaws) is because the original developer decided to implement a solution for a real use case.