It's also harder to litigate on Equifax's part. Often times they just attempt to settle

Absolutely! The only authorized representatives are company officers or lawyers, and many small claims courts don't allow lawyers. So unless the CEO of Equifax attends every court hearing in the country, or unless the judge allows them to move it out of small claims court, you're likely to recover. (not a lawyer, not legal advice)

Varies by state. Some states will allow an ordinary employee of the company to appear.

My jurisdiction limits claims to $6000 and allows attorneys.

Furthermore, can the court compel some kind of class-action suit if it realizes there's a small claims backlog of thousands of plaintiffs against the same defendant for the same issue? This thing could clog all the SC courts in the country if all 100mm people file like this.

From what I've read on some law blogs, this doesn't happen often at all, and were it to happen, it would also mean that there's no reason for Equifax not to also deal with these cases in a class action.