I never got the argument that it’s hard to sign up to. I think the main issues are that people want content from media entities that may not be present or welcome - legacy media etc. This could be where threads.net fills the gap but then it sounds like they will be blocked from a lot of instances.
I have worked around it via press.coop but they don’t cover everything. I also follow more journalists directly than I did on Twitter. I don’t miss Twitter and find Mastodon more informative but I’m sure that’s because of the information I’m looking for.