[bastawhiz]

Technology improved, people got Features and Devices, they wanted to use their Features and Devices, and they switched to the service that gave them their Features on their Devices. There's no mystery.

The average person doesn't care about federation or an open protocol or whatever. They probably don't even understand those things and they don't want to understand them. They just want to chat with their friends and send emojis and not get upset that things don't work. IRC, by all accounts, fails to do—out of the box—all of those things (well).