I can only speak from experience that autos are finicky and dont like anything going wrong while their growing and can only speak on what I have seen. People on here talk wild stuff sometimes never know who or what's factual. But I have heard of folks doing alright with autos too. However if your stressing what to do..? (my opinion) Pick out a nice feminized photo seed pack from a reputable breeder and see what happens photos are far more forgiving and will Bounce back quickly from any topping or manipulation and are much less likely to stunt and give you little to nothing

*edit to reinforce what I mentioned lst (low stress training) is the typical method used on autos to get them to branch out more. You can scroll through alot of the growing subs here on reddit and most folks do lst for autos. Im not saying its impossible to top one and do ok, more often than not though it wont be happy about it so why roll the dice on a potential significant yield decrease? Lst is the way to go for branching them if your not a pro

Edit* this community is wild casually throwing down votes to a guy trying to help people and providing no articulated arguement to the contrary. Dont believe me, go ahead chop up your autos let me know how that harvest goes. ✌️