I think maybe the reason for bulk publishing posts is a per-use case but it’s overkill for a data migration in our use case for example.
We have a specific category on discourse, which we publish woocommerce products to on creation, so forum members can talk about those specific products for support. No other data auto publishes.
Auto-publish handles all ones going past the point of WP discourse being installed. This is automatically triggered when you edit a post in wordpress or in this example, change the post publish status which can be done on multiple posts at once, therefore meaning wp discourse then Auto-publishes the content as configured to discourse.
WP Discourse auto publish is a feature, so unsure what the concern is.