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The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
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.
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That's the WP minute.com/support.
Let's cut to the chase because it seems
that WordPress news is back this week.
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.
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