You may recall a little while back I had an issue with my WordPress.com blog, the original incarnation of this site. The site’s “automated anti-spam” system had flagged my blog and taken it offline. I hasten to add that there is, of course, no spam or any other sort of inappropriate, objectionable or illegal content either on the original form of this site or this present incarnation. It was a mistake on their part, brought about by WordPress.com’s parent company Automattic increasingly relying on “AI” (spit) for more and more of their functionality.
This was the first time I’d had an issue with WordPress.com since joining in 2006. But it was serious enough that it made me move my site over to a self-hosted WordPress.org installation, which is what you’re reading right now.
For those unfamiliar with the distinction, WordPress.com is a free-with-paid-options blogging service where you can set up a blog or other website quickly and easily. Its free offering has gradually gotten worse over the years, now placing a rather obtrusive “Made with WordPress” banner on new sites created, but for the most part, I’ve always been satisfied with it for my purposes, particularly because, having been a user for so long, I had been “grandfathered” in to not having things like that banner ad.
WordPress.org, meanwhile, is an open-source project that maintains WordPress itself, which is a content management system and blogging platform you can install on any website. The main distinction is that WordPress.com is a service provided to you, while WordPress.org is both a piece of Web-based software and the community surrounding it. And one of the key differences is that while with WordPress.com, you’re stuck with preset configurations unless you pay through the nose for their extortionate “Business” plan, with WordPress.org you can tinker with and customise the core software as you see fit, either by fiddling with the code yourself, or by installing plugins.
I was dismayed to see how much “AI” rot had infested WordPress.com, and it made me no longer want to associate with the platform. Now, it seems, there is trouble with WordPress.org too, as reported by the excellent tech blog 404 Media.
I have not followed this whole saga, but it seems Automattic is having a bit of a spat with a company called “WP Engine”, which is a service that hosts websites built using WordPress. Apparently Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg branded WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress” and complained about them and their investors not contributing “sufficiently” to the open source project, and that WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand might confuse users into thinking it is an official WordPress thing.
I can sort of see his point on that last thing — though WP Engine maintains their usage is covered by fair use — but this whole thing appears to escalated beyond reasonable proportion at this point. WP Engine sent Automattic a cease and desist letter telling Mullenweg to stop having a tantrum, and Mullenweg responded with what he calls a “scorched Earth nuclear approach”, sending his own cease and desist letter to WP Engine.
It didn’t stop there. Mullenweg banned WP Engine from accessing resources on WordPress.org, including, among other things, the plugin directory and the ability to automatically update plugins and themes. Not only that, he has raised a significant number of eyebrows by adding a peculiar checkbox to the WordPress.org login page, asking users to confirm that they are “not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise”.
This, of course, has had people asking what the consequences are for not ticking that box. And it seems a few individuals who have been longtime contributors to the WordPress.org project have been banned from the community simply for asking “what the hell, bro?”, to paraphrase.
This is concerning. Not being able to access the WordPress.org community doesn’t preclude anyone from building their site using the WordPress.org software, but it is a problem for those who have been helping to maintain and update it. On top of that, some contributors are quite reasonably concerned about potential legal repercussions if they do not tick the box, believing Mullenweg to be just that petty.
My simple question is… well, it’s “what the hell, bro?”
WordPress, in both its .com and .org incarnations, powers a significant chunk of the modern Web. And while blogs have somewhat fallen out of favour since the rise of social media, there are still thriving communities of both WordPress.com and WordPress.org bloggers regularly posting — and who, more to the point, likely have a significant body of work hosted on some form of WordPress derivative at this point, which it will be a pain to move somewhere else.
It’s depressing to see both incarnations of WordPress fall foul of enshittification and CEO arrogance. Because that’s what this is. Whether it’s the AI garbage being rammed into WordPress.com or whatever the fuck Mullenweg thinks he’s doing with WordPress.org right now, the WordPress name is being dragged through the mud right now. And that’s unfortunate because, AI garbage aside, WordPress is still a great product.
I hope this situation is resolved sooner rather than later. And in the meantime, if you’re still blogging on WordPress.com, you might want to pop into your Site Settings menu and tick this checkbox just so your blog isn’t scraped for AI shite.
This site is staying where it is and in the incarnation it presently has for the moment. I really hope I don’t have to migrate again, and that I can go back to recommending WordPress like I always used to. Right now, though, Automattic is a company I would advise most folks to avoid like the plague.
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