Is the "description" meta tag really necessary?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

The site contains many articles.
Does the absence of this tag affect the indexing of the site by search engines?
How will the site look in search engines without this tag? What will be displayed instead of the description in this case?
Interested in your experience and opinion, I will be grateful for advice.

Answer 1

Instead of a description, a piece of text or some kind of list or technical text will be taken. Many problems may arise. The description tag is mandatory, otherwise there may be unpredictable consequences, although in 50% of cases everything will be ok.