They missed the opportunity as well, a lot did. I am not saying they would have succeeded for any specific reasons, but back then all the possibilities were there. Internet has become a nightmare, we lost everything that made it special when it started. Nowadays probably 90% of the non-porn traffic is going to Google, Amazon or Facebook and it becomes a problem for freedom of speech and "democracy". Concentration of such power or money is a problem.

Minitel was run by the French state, it doesn't get much more centralised than that! And of course far-right or Nazi messageboards would have got censored off it immediately.

(I have no idea whether there was much politics content on minitel, but I've not heard of it, and would be interested in references)

On the french Minitel a lot of discussion forums were private owned and not really censored. I think the censorship is more heavy on facebook than it was on minitel services.