This looks like you may want to engage with other ongoing conversations:
- redesigning notifications on inaturalist (so that lower-priority follows don’t interfere with the notifications that you don’t want to miss): https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/notifications-on-inaturalist-please-share-your-ideas/374
- automating in some way, perhaps via a setting like you suggest, which observations to follow: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/create-option-to-choose-automatic-follow/94