WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials, arousing suspicions

Organisers of WordCamps, community-organized events for WordPress users, have been ordered to take down some social media posts and share their login credentials for social networks.

The order to share creds came from an employee of Automattic, the compay whose CEO happens to be Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, and which owns owns and operates WordPress.com, a hosted version of the open source CMS. A letter sent to WordCamp organizers explains that the creds are needed due to "recurrent issues with new organizing teams losing access to the event's social media accounts."

So far, so sensible.

But the requirement to share creds comes in the middle of a nasty spat in the WordPress community, sparked by Mullenweg's efforts to have rival hosting biz WP Engine license the WordPress trademark or devote more staff to working on the open source content management system's code. Mullenweg argues that private-equity-controlled WP Engine is not acting the in spirit of open source by profiting from WordPress. WP Engine contends that it does plenty for the community.

One source of support for WP Engine was WordCamp Sydney, which recently used its X account to argue that the hosting biz sponsoring its events was a valuable contribution to the WordPress community. "It's not just about contributing dev back to core," event organizers argued.

We'd link to the Xeet in which WordCamp Sydney made that observation, but another Automattic employee wrote to the event's organizers with a request to take it down – on grounds that it did not "align with the Community Team's view." The Community Team includes Automattic staffers who help with WordCamps. We understand the comments about WP Engine were deemed to be a personal opinion and therefore not appropriate fare for a WordCamp account.

"When posting from an official WordCamp account, your team is representing both the event and the Community Team," the letter asserts.

A source familiar with Sydney WordCamp's operations told The Register that volunteers saw the takedown request as a personal threat – as non-compliance with the request would have led to them being forced from the event's organizing team.

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The letter ordering sharing of social media creds, and the takedown request sent to WordCamp Sydney, were both shared by Kellie Peterson, former head of domains at Automattic.

The Register has verified that the material she posted was sent to WordCamp organizers.

Peterson described the letters as "just the latest attempt by [Matt] Mullenweg to control anything said about WordPress or himself across the internet."

A person with knowledge of Sydney WordCamp's response to the letters requiring sharing of social media logon details is felt to regard them as "suspicious" and a "hostile takeover" rather than a genuine attempt to improve continuity of access. Our sources tell us that many WordCamps have used the same social handles for years, and Automattic has never before considered the matter important.

But Peterson told The Register she is aware of a "history of Automattic taking actions regarding organizers similar to this."

"At each turn it fractures the community in various ways. Whether that is being removed from an organizing role for refusing to comply with an arbitrary rule change, controlling the focus/content of a WordCamp, mandating the geographic naming of WordCamps, or refusing to list events on the WordCamp site. The negative outcomes and loss of community member engagement have clearly resulted in stagnation."

WordCamp Sydney, meanwhile, has experienced lower-than-hoped-for ticket sales, leaving organizers frustrated that their volunteer efforts to create an event have been damaged by a situation they did not create and cannot control. ®