The fediverse might be technically better, but it's a big mess. Is it PubSub, is it Mastodon, Lemmy, Podcasting 2.0? We're trying to put way to many project and ideas into "The Fediverse" to provide a clear trajectory.
I feel like it would have been easier to fix NNTP. It had at least a clear focus.
Now, if you had said "if we had spent the time building a better NNTP protocol and servers", I would have agreed. In the end, that's basically what the fediverse is.