All that being said, a rewrite is still harder. Think how much work kbin and lemmy have put in. Think of all the apps that have been developed around them. It’s still sql driven, meaning you can easily write any kind of moderation tool you want in any language of your choice.
I think the Rust vs Golang question is just opinionated, and until there’s something better than activitypub there’s nothing even a fork can really do about those issues, and I’d really want the FSF to deal with those kinds of complaints.
I’ll never understand devs that go “I don’t know that language”. PHP is one of the only languages used in production I don’t know. I have read examples and it looks like you bastardized a Java/c# clone with bash or a string templating language, which isn’t very appealing. But like, if I had to learn it, I’d do so in a month, functionally writing it in a week tops. Learning languages is part of the job, and they all add something to your understanding of paradigms.