Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

One important people to keep in mind as they read this post, the linked Google Doc, and tweets from the past day where a bunch of people are receiving unsolicited DMs[1] from Automattic with grammar that matches Matt's:

- Matt, under various guises, is shifting blame to different entities that are effectively himself.

- Automattic is Matt. Matt is the CEO of Automattic.

- The WordPress Foundation is, effectively, Matt.

- The problem is Matt. Maybe he's right about WP Engine, but the way he has and continues to handle everything has been disastrous.

1. https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1846448485979107824

Matt has a history of doing this. There was a similar blowup at Tumblr (owned by Automattic) earlier this year [1] where Matt did the same thing, DM'ing users criticizing him and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...

> and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with.

While I think Matt's current behaviour is abhorrent, my understanding is the linked article buries the lede a bit.

The user claimed they were banned due to bigotry and that Tumblr was lying about them having NSFW content. Things continued to escalate until Matt shared a list of their NSFW accounts.

https://www.threads.net/@samhenrigold/post/DAuTTaEtm_7