Is this behavior in api & integrations expected?

I respectfully disagree on one detail. In my setup the opposite held true, though I suspect it comes down to community size.

Following this thread closely. We are about to face the exact same decision and the replies here are gold.

Strong agree. Good defaults beat a wall of toggles every single time.

One caveat for larger communities: keep an eye on the indexes. At a few thousand rows the difference is night and day.

For what it is worth, the same approach works with the PMPro adapter — the membership side is identical from here.