You are quite correct - you absolutely can use auto offset commits in that case. In my scenario, though, I have a lot of messages and a low recovery time objec

You are quite correct - you absolutely can use auto offset commits in that case. In my scenario, though, I have a lot of messages and a low recovery time objective on service restart so I find it cleaner to skip messages I know I won't need. Also reduces noise on the service logs, makes for easier debugging etc.