Okay, I tried it and can confirm that bulk moving topics to a different category that is being first-post-watched by a user, does not trigger notifications for that user. Just to be clear: the emphasis is on bulk. Moving topics the “normal way” does trigger notifications.
I have not tried it with tags, but would assume that the same logic applies.
No, it looks like you are right. Thanks for clarifying.
Edit: Sorry, this isn’t over yet. I just saw that at least one user did in fact receive an email for one of the two topics I bulk moved. But I didn’t. I can’t make any sense of it right now, especially since that user only was notified about one of the teo topics. Possibly it has something to do with either having previously been notified about some of the topics or having already read them, though, in my case this only applies to one of the two topics.
In addition, I noticed that one of our mods recently moved another topic into the same category (and I’m pretty sure he didn’t use bulk move, but will ask him) and nobody was notified at all.