Oh, the #Gravatar / #Automattic team wrote about federated social networks, but they did not mention #ActivityPub for #WordPress.
https://blog.gravatar.com/2025/06/13/decentralized-social-media/
A collective of former #WordPress #developers and contributors backed by #LinuxFoundation launched FAIR Package Manager, a new and independent distribution system for trusted WordPress #plugins and #themes.
This is a response to recent controversy after legal conflict between commercial WordPress hosting providers #Automattic and #WPEngine, after former banned the latter's access to the WordPress platform used by all WordPress sites to keep plugins and themes up-to-date.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/linux-foundation-unveils-decentralized-wordpress-plugin-manager/
The #Automattic Customer Service (sorry "Customer Happiness") team are quite nice to deal with, at least the ones at Pocket Casts. I didn't quite get what I needed, but that was more my fault for being riddled with ADHD and chronic forgetfulness than theirs.
They came to a good compromise though.
I feel I should probably call out good CS when I see it rather than just whining about the bad :D
"We launched in Sep/2024 with a bold mission: to foster an #open, #decentralized, and #usercentric #socialweb. In just the few short months that remained in 2024, we made meaningful progress. Our participation at #W3C #TPAC and collaborations with major stakeholders like #Mastodon, #Ghost, and #Automattic have helped spark momentum for a healthier, more resilient online ecosystem.
Today we are proud to publish our 2024 #AnnualReport– the first of many."
#SWF
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/05/06/reflecting-on-our-first-year-the-social-web-foundations-2024-annual-report/
Today, I stumbled over a blog post by #Gravatar titled “Build Your AI Identity with Gravatar’s New Tool”, and I’m glad I deleted my Gravatar account many years ago.
Coincidently, while trying to see how bad Gravatar became by reading the post, my ad blocker blocked me from visiting this domain. Former me was smart enough to add this domain to the block list, because the time of embedding third-party content in a website has passed for privacy reasons many years ago.
Thanks a lot @lordmatt but there is no need to give us a tip, we have the great luck that #Automattic takes good care of us 
If you think about donating to another fediverse project, simple give them a bit more 
/cc @obenland
The company behind #Wordpress, #Automattic, is getting increasingly aligned.
The employee base now consist of "Mullenweg’s strongest supporters, and people who couldn’t afford to risk leaving their jobs", neither of which will contradict #Mullenweg.
Apparently recently, Automattic has been adding watermarking to the background in internal communications systems. The result will be that those afraid of leaving will be even more compliant. What a work culture.
https://www.404media.co/automattic-wordpress-p2-watermark-leakers/
Automattic Transparency Report 2024
covering government requests, DMCA copyright takedown requests, GDPR, and more, to WordPress.com and Tumblr for the period July-December 2024.
https://transparency.automattic.com/2025/04/14/transparency-report-update-july-december-2024/
Full report:
https://transparency.automattic.com/
"I know that losing your job was hard," my 8-year-old said to me this evening, "So you can borrow this." He handed me his newest soft toy.
"It'll help you feel better when you're sad. Keep him for the week."
#note #work #automattic #job #employment #cute #children #parenting
Automattic's Big Bet: Layoffs Amid Growth Signal a Shift in Strategy https://tinyurl.com/mr2a33dy
The biggest surprise to me about the current #Automattic layoffs isn't the scale of it or that they're discriminating against those that were older than 40 — it's that there was a QA team.
Apparently Automattic are laying off around one in six of their workforce. And I'm one of the unlucky ones.
Anybody remote hiring for a UK-based full-stack web developer (in a world that doesn't seem to believe that full-stack developers exist anymore) with 25+ years professional experience, specialising in PHP, Ruby, JS, HTML, CSS, devops, and about 50% of CMSes you've ever heard of (and probably some you haven't)... with a flair for security, accessibility, standards-compliance, performance, and DexEx?
CV at: https://danq.me/cv/index.html
Blogtastisch - 2. Blogs und das Fediverse
Pocket Casts: Web-, Mac- und Windows-Apps jetzt kostenlos zugänglich
Pocket Casts, eine der bekanntesten Plattformen für das Hören und Verwalten von Podcasts, bietet ab sofort seine Web-, Mac- und Windows-Apps für alle Nutzer kostenlos an. Diese Entscheidung
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/pocket-casts-web-mac-und-windows-apps-jetzt-kostenlos-zugaenglich/
#News #Services #Automattic #MacApp #OpenRSSPodcasting #PocketCasts #PocketCastsPlus #PodcastsKostenlos #WebPlayer #WindowsApp
Recent experience: #Automattic: refuses to remove #disinformation and fails to remove copyright violations despite DMCA reports. #Google: refuses to remove disinformation but claims it will disable or remove copyright infringements ‘soon’ (as of March 6) but has failed to do so to date.
I guess they only help big companies āe.
If this is true then only @wordpressdotcom would receive updates while the rest of the #WordPress community withers.
@photomatt Considers Delaying WordPress Releases Through 2027 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mullenweg-considers-delaying-wordpress-releases-through-2027/541821/
I am not a lawyer or time traveler, but from Matt’s odd statements, it appears that #WPEngine may actually win their lawsuit against #Automattic.
Matt on the other hand is “cutting off his nose to spite his face” with these measures, which is baffling honestly.
Any ActivityPub/Wordpress wizards out there? When I post a blog to AP and people like or boost it on Mastodon and other places, I need to manually accept those interactions from the Wordpress interface. I can understand comments need to be accepted to avoid spam on the blog. But what's the purpose of the other stuff? #Wordpress #ActivityPub #Automattic
That’s now two pages reported to #Automattic for DMCA violations. Since they failed to act on the first, I doubt they will suddenly grow a backbone for the second. But it’s a US tech firm, so obviously you can’t trust them to honour their own terms and processes.
Late last year, #Automattic refused to remove a #disinformation post about me. I have filed a very routine DMCA complaint about a very obvious violation hosted by them. This has also been ignored.
