"Fork it" sounds like a generous invitation. The code is open, after all, so take it, copy it, and finally build the perfect version you keep insisting should exist. The right to fork is such a fundamental tenet of open source. It just so happens that invoking it often results in ending a conversation.
In his book Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider outlines an internet shaped by "implicit feudalism", essentially platforms organized around administrators with near-absolute authority over their domains. The primary check on bad rule is not democracy within the domain but competition between domains. If you do not like this lord, you can simply move to another fiefdom, and find a better benevolent dictator for life.
Behind Schneider's argument is Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. In it he describes what people do when an institution begins to fail them. They can leave, or they can speak, or just stay out of loyalty. The choices impact each other, for example when leaving becomes easier, fewer people may remain to complain, and the institution may feel less pressure to change. An institution that wants silence can bar the doors, or it can also hold them wide open.
Open source by definition keeps the door wide open, legally to boot. But a fork only gives you the code. An open source project is more than its code, it's the sum of its maintainers, infrastructure, trademarks, dependencies, and trust. You can copy the code in seconds, the rest you would need to rebuild from scratch in most cases. The people invoking the right to fork already know this.
In the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Ursula K. Le Guin writes about a city of impossible happiness whose joy depends on a child kept alone in a filthy basement. Everyone knows the child is there, some have even seen the child. A few citizens, after seeing the child, leave the city and never return. We don't know if their departure changes anything, all we know is that Omelas remains, and the joy continues.
No one carries the child into daylight or organizes to challenge the imprisonment. The Omelas is the story of a society explaining to you what it values through the exits it provides, and through the exits it refuses to imagine. Omelas has an open gate for the conscience, and a locked door for the child in the basement, and no one using their voice.
In open source, you can fork it. You can build another city, but one without the people, joy, or festival. Sometimes that is worth the effort, so we cherish that freedom to fork. Or you can walk away, create a distance between you and the injustice, while the injustice remains. Not ideal, but you can't change everything. But we also have the technology of using your voice. Dissent is a tool, like the other tools we use.
Don't let anyone use "fork it" as a euphemism to point at the door. We don't live in the fucking Omelas and we don't bow to kings and lords.