Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but if you want to bring national news attention to poor security without doing real damage, racial slurs are probably the most sure fire way to do so.
WordPress on its own is very bare bones, you're almost certainly going to want to install plugins, which by default can only be done from the builtin connection to WP servers.
WP without plugins doesn't even have basic things like gallery light boxes. Honestly it seems deliberate, since the easiest way to get a lot of basic features that should be in core is to install the automattic(the company that owns wordpress) jetpack extension, that also installs a bunch of data harvesting connections to their proprietary SaaS.
I still think defederation is the biggest hurdle. It would be a lot easier if you could just tell people it didn't matter what instance they join, they will be able to follow anyone.
Usually when I mention it people will talk about all the reasons defederation exists, but it doesn't change the fact that if a normal person has to start looking up what instance they can follow uncle ReaganLover69 on, they're probably going to stay on twitter.
Dai-guard, a somewhat obscure mecha anime. It's a comedy about what would realistically happen if you had a giant mecha fighting monsters from another dimension: bureaucracy, lawsuits, government interference, and physics.
Or just, you know, subscribe to the coms that interest you, like everyone did on reddit.