But these apps are explicitly designed to be decentralised and avoid state control! I'm no fan of e.g. the capitol rioters, but the analogy with IBM and the Nazis seems to get things backwards. The rioters don't control the government apparatus, they are trying to subvert it. And the use of this technology is to aid that by preventing centralised censorship and snooping.

If you really want to power past Godwin's law, then you could compare them to Hitler in the 1920s, subverting the Weimar constitution.