Sorry neither Kapa nor the forum threads were all that helpful, @seewhy
+1, always amazing, @ahblake!
We share your concern! And really a list of images from CSV is the same as images attached to Entities -- as soon as we move into a more dynamic way of specifying images we get to a place where users might not realize just how many images they're transferring. This is why we've reluctant to go deep in this before we have robust ways to limit what Entities individual users see, Entity archiving, progressive updates and other functionality aimed at reducing the burden you describe.
We'll try to do better with this -- we have so much good stuff to build these days that we're finding it hard to keep up with the forum!