Once you log in to the backend of a WordPress website, one of the things you then you see by default is a widget showing the latest WordPress “News.” What you actually get is very different. Late last year, you would have seen a promotion for the WordPress.com service:

The source of that was the WP Tavern, which is owned by the head of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. He is also the CEO of Automattic, which owns WordPress.com. The post didn’t disclose any of that. It isn’t the first time the current author of the WP Tavern has used it to run what is advertising for their boss’s business.

Matt Mullenweg also personally controls what is being included in that feed and is portrayed as being news. (Respected members of the WordPress community have suggested professionalize the news feed without success so far.)

The most prominent item in that feed is always the latest post on the WordPress News blog. As part of Automattic and Matt Mullenweg’s attempt to get parts of the case brought against them by WP Engine thrown out, the lawyers argued in a legal filing made December 19 that posts on that lack the characteristics of typical fact-based document and compared them to “statements made on internet message board:”

They were both made in blog posts on the Website, which “lack the characteristics of [a] typical fact-based document[].” ComputerXpress, Inc. v. Jackson, 93 Cal. App. 4th 993, 1012-13 (Cal. Ct. App. 2021) (“disparaging” statements made on internet message board were opinion, including that plaintiff’s computer product “was of inferior quality”).

They also claimed that contrary to the name, the blog actual features personal commentary:

Nor does the “News” label change the substance, for the posts employ an informal writing style that plainly connotes personal commentary, not news reporting, and no reasonable reader would have taken the posts as news as opposed to heated criticism.

It’s an odd argument in part because the news feed also include Matt Mullenweg’s personal blog, which presumably would actually be a place for his personal commentary.

They also claimed that he was making “hyperbolic” statements on the News blog, which hardly seem appropriate for anyone, much less the head of the WordPress project to do.

That all might be a good legal defense, but suggests that the blog shouldn’t be included in a News feed. The problem then is that the only person who can clear out the non-news from the feed is also Matt Mullenweg. (We provide an alternative collection of WordPress news and opinion.)