I thought your questions were already discussed and clarified starting here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/updating-iucn-red-list-conservation-statuses/25712/40
I think virtually everyone agrees with you here. In the thread linked above there is a process laid out for creating and documenting “deviations” from default geoprivacy (at the global IUCN level). It does unfortunately involve manually adding flags (and links to those flags in the status descriptions). But once those are in place, it becomes much easier to automate future updates to IUCN statuses without undoing existing deviations from default taxon geoprivacy.
And yes, unfortunately the long-standing default on iNat has been to obscure things “Near Threatened” (NT) or worse, until manually opened. If you are asking to change that default going forward, that might be appropriate for a submission to Feature Requests.
Also, you are probably already aware that local status/geoprivacy settings now take precedence over global or higher-level settings (down to State/Province administrative levels). So a quick fix could always be to add a status to the taxon that applies to just Tasmania, for example, and leave taxon geoprivacy set to Open for that place. But in the long-run, still better I think to establish the needed deviations at the global/IUCN status level.
The curator guide is a bit behind the times, I think, with respect to the new process for automating IUCN status updates.