What a kind person you are! I like that yr header says you "think people are too obsessed with hating things." I guess it's OK for you to be hateful to me, though. Fair enough. We are complicated people, full of contradictions.
It's perfectly OK for a reader to choose not to read something, if it is not tagged, just in case. That's a reader's choice.
When you go to a bookstore or library, you'll notice that books have plot summaries on their back covers or inside the flyleaf of the dust jacket. They do not have tags or trigger warnings. Readers choose to read them (or not!) based on their best guesses at what could happen in the story which might not be for them.
That's how grown-ups deal with media consumption when they wish to avoid certain content. They understand that not everything is going to be for them, because there is every kind of story out there in the world, and once in a while even their educated hunches about content might steer them wrong. In which case they can stop reading and discard, donate, put away, or burn the book. Why are you so willing to surrender yr agency that you prefer--even wish to require!--for other people to build yr guardrails? You are not a baby. You can decide what to consume based on available information, even if what is available is "this is not enough information for me to feel comfortable consuming this media." It boggles me that you demand to be made comfortable. Do you not trust yrself and yr own judgement?
If only reading "properly tagged" fic is important to you, I suggest you read only comprehensively tagged fic, with a plot summary that interests you. You are welcome to just. not. read. a fic which isn't tagged, or has a vague summary--or no summary! That's fine. There are 16 million fics on the AO3, and a lot of them probably just aren't for you. That is not evidence that authors are trying to fuck you over. It's just the way things go.
I tag extensively because I like to. I've read fics with no tags. I've read fics with tags that identify only things I enjoy. I've read fics with tags that identify things I definitely don't enjoy. I get to choose. And I don't have to read every fic. I don't have to finish a fic I'm not happy reading. I have never once been angry at an author because of their tags (or few tags, or no tags).
It has not been my experience that authors on the AO3 purposely mis-tag fics to fool readers, though I suppose it's possible, especially among the segment of users who think the AO3 has an algorithm and/or that getting hits/kudos/comments/"engagement" "matters" in some way. So if you're trying to avoid, say, mpreg, filter it out of yr searches, and then if you read a fic summary that seems like the fic might include mpreg, just don't read it.
Why are you so angry? Authors don't have to baby readers. Authors don't owe readers anything. Authors probably shouldn't lie to readers, but I've never encountered any who do, and don't know why they would. But you can read what you want, whether it's tagged or not. Nobody is obligated to tag their work, for you, for fun, for sensitivity, for any reason.
Readers are responsible for their own experience.
