It's the WP minute. WordPress news is back and is pesky AI coming for our content? Wait, what's that? You say wordpress.com is actually selling it. Let's dive into that and your links for the week coming up. Today's episode is brought to you by us here at the WP minute. If you like the work we do consider supporting us with a digital coffee for as little as $5 or join the membership, or you can join nearly 100 other word pressers, like you who love the WordPress news.
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At least the link squad inside the WP minute slack have been busy curating the news as we kick off the month of March. 4 0 4 media reported on two of Automatic's products, wordpress.com and tumbler.com. Apparently signing a deal with AI tools to help train their models. Based on public facing content that users publish. I ran a poll on Twitter. It has about an hour left@thetimeofthiswritingaskingdoeswordpress.com sharing or selling user generated content to AI platforms bother you?
Currently respondents are steady at 59.3%. Yes, it does bother me 40.7%. No, it doesn't bother me. That's based off of. 135 participants thus far, check the link in the show notes. If you want to see the results of that survey. It's important to know that if you are a wordpress.com user, as I am with my $300 per year podcast setup, newsletter. You can opt out with their quote, prevent third-party sharing and quote, setting inside settings. And then under the general tab.
From what I can see, this creates a robots dot TXT file that sets a disallow for well-known AI platforms like Claude and chat GBT. There's some others in there as well. What is not clear to me is whether or not this also disables some other API or data firehose. That is part of a shared data agreement with automatic. Is there some other connection behind the scenes where automatic allows partners to forklift this data over to their platform.
I uploaded a 12 minute video to Twitter going deeper on this topic and showing you in more detail. What the robots dot TXT file looks like. You can check out that video if you want more expanded thoughts on this topic. However, here are my two takeaways to ponder on number one. We've been giving up our data for decades to Google and exchange for the potential. I can't stress that enough potential of ranking higher in their results and filling in.
Very lucrative data points for business information, map, data and other structured metadata. To classify our content for their mission to index the world's information. We got nothing in return other than a moving target of an SEO algorithm while Google built the world's greatest cash cow in Google ads. Number two. The thing that really bugs me about the wordpress.com deal is that it's yet another example of creators getting squeezed. This is our content.
And while these AI platforms have most likely crawled all of it by now, automatic gets to profit off of it. But not us. Could I export my content from wordpress.com and dump the zip into chat GPT and out spits a $20 bill. It's just more of the same really it's what I expect of any corporation. The only thing automatic has to release now is a PR note stating that they were breached in 20 million user records were stolen, but not their billing information. Of course.
If you want to go deeper into critical thinking about this topic, read the 10 questions for Matt Mullenweg regarding data ownership and AI by some other guy who thinks out loud on the internet too, or hit reply. And let me know how you feel about this whole thing. Important links this week. Now it's time for those important links this weekend. Here's a lot.
Let's go ahead and dive right in my dear friend, Corey Miller has stepped back from his day-to-day role at post status to pilot the ship as owner and advisor community star, Michelle for shed has stepped in as the executive director and will lead post status from here forward. Hosting her a sponsor of WP minute found themselves in a bit of hot water as users discovered affiliate plugins activated in M U status. M U stands for must use and cannot be disabled via the dashboard.
The hosting your team responded and has removed the plugin from hosting accounts. Matt Mullenweg can't seem to rest on his sabbatical. As Steph Lunberg writes, Matt Mullenweg teaches a masterclass on why we have trust and safety teams. FSC outreach program is now simply called outreach and sees WP minute member beer, get poly hack, taking the reins. Congrats beer. Get. In more unsurprising news from big Corp's Chris Correa. Penn's a new reflection on the digital ocean acquisition of his blog.
CSS tricks. Lawrence Lauder me wP minute member wrote about Omni sends also a WP minute sponsor omnipresence across the WP media landscape. This should be required reading for any WordPress company thinking about marketing and promotion. It seems Daniel Bach. Huber WP minute member is running wordpress.com while Matt Mullenweg is away. Katie Keith from barn to sold seven plugins to former SkyBridge founders. At Kestrel. And a new video of the week.
Here's what WooCommerce looks like on 2024 theme. The results may shock you. Surprisingly good. Actually, I'll cut to the chase on that one as well. Check out the video link in the show notes. That's it for today's episode. Get the weekly newsletter at the WP minute. com slash subscribe. Want to support the show and join a Slack group filled with WordPress professionals like you talk about the news, share your WordPress business content and network with others. Head to the WP minute.
com slash support and get access to our group, support the show for 5 or more. If you feel we provided more value, thanks to our pillar sponsors, pressable. Bluehost and OmniSend. Thanks to our Foundation Plus sponsors, WP World, Image SEO, and Hostinger. Thanks to all of our annual supporting members and you, the listener. Without your support, the WP Minute wouldn't be possible. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.