The '--userns=auto' argument is a useful isolation method in both rootless and rootful Podman containers. This allows rootful Podman to orchestrate privileged capabilities while running the container processes in an unprivileged namespace.
See the discussion here:
https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/discussions...
I've been doing this for a while now and it is by far much easier to work with and just as safe if configured properly. I think people just cargo cult thier way into wanting rootless containers for their long running services with no real look into if it's actually needed.
Rootless containers have their place, actual userspace workloads. Things like dev containers or normal users running containers but if one is creating users to run system level services then they are just adding extra steps imo.