The voice of WordPress could be a powerful force to help address many problems that exist in the WordPress space. Including lots of FUD about security that gets in the way of focusing on fixing real security issues. Unfortunately, it is increasingly being used to promote the for-profit interests of Matt Mullenweg. That has bled in to the WordPress documentation.

Recently, Matt Mullenweg has been complaining that people confuse WordPress and WP Engine. If this really is a significant issue, then there is a bigger issue that he could address. The confusion between his for-profit WordPress.com and WordPress. There is so much confusion that the WordPress website, WordPress.org, has a post titled “What’s the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?” That page has existed since at least 2015. Since 2015, the page has this as the final section:

Why doesn’t Automattic rename WordPress.com to something more distinct?

You’ll have to ask them. Likely, the downsides of a rebranding campaign would outweigh the benefits. The ambiguity certainly hasn’t been all bad. It makes it fairly clear to users that they can migrate their WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted WordPress install.

That stayed that way until October 4. On October 5, it was changed to this:

Why doesn’t Automattic rename WordPress.com to something more distinct?

WordPress.com offers multi-site for free and on very inexpensive plans, has never had any downtime or lost user data since 2005, and has onboarded and introduced hundreds of millions of people to WordPress. Their higher-tier plans offer some of the fastest and most secure WordPress Managed Hosting available anywhere, with full plugin and theme support. That advanced managed platform is now licensed to other hosts through wp.cloud and is raising the bar for the industry. The flavor of WordPress offered by WordPress.com is a huge asset to the brand and adoption of WordPress overall.

That hardly reads like something that should be part of documentation. It is ad copy.

The incredible claim that WordPress.com has never had downtime is disputed by information WordPress.com links to. On the WordPress.com Status page it states:

Is WordPress.com down for everyone or just me?

The Internet is made up of many thousands of networks all linked together. There may be a problem with one of those networks somewhere between you and WordPress.com that is stopping you from reaching our servers. Here’s a quick way to check:

Is WordPress.com down for everyone or just me?

If your site is down, read Why is my Site Down? for solutions.

The first link in that takes you to a page that says there has been downtime:

What is missing from that is any disclosure that the WordPress website is apparently owned by Matt Mullenweg.

Not The Only Promotion Added Recently

WordPress’s recommended hosts page was modified to promote another Matt Mullenweg brand, Pressable as the first recommended host:

As was noted in The WP Weekly newsletter this week, that was done by an employee of another of his for-profit entities, Audrey Capital, on the orders of him: “Update the hosting page, per matt.” Previously, WordPress.com was being promoted on that. But it was fourth out of four hosts, instead of the first of four. If you are confused about Matt Mullenweg’s web of companies and other entities, we put together an explanation of his web.