I think you spelled “mass compromise of unsuspecting users due to unpatched security holes” wrong.
Like it or not, browsers as the primary networked application that people use are the prime target to exploit users. They connect to unknown endpoints of questionable trustworthiness (unlike most other networked apps) and execute code loaded from there. They also handle people’s secrets such as credentials to Homebanking. We maybe shouldn’t be at that point, but here we are and browser vendors need to handle that responsibility. Quick auto updates are crucial for that. Expert users might dislike them, but let’s face it, we’re not the majority.
I don't think anyone is really against quick security-related fixes being delivered with a degree of automation. What most power users dislike is mixing these updates with other ones (typically for commercial reasons).