I’ve been watching the whole WordPress drama play out over the last few months and with the latest announcement that they’re not contributing to features I love for the time being, I’m out! ✌️ WordPress and Automattic have gotten way too dramatic and toxic in my opinion and I’ve been on the edge for a while but it keeps getting worse. I don’t want to be part of a community like this and if the features that brought me to WordPress (Gutenberg and Federation) aren’t going to get any support for the foreseeable future that’s already way too long. It’s been painful enough waiting for my dreams to be supported and I’m not letting anyone push back on that any further.

I’m planning to also delete Tumblr and Beeper since they’re also part of the Automattic community. There were some exciting possibilities (especially with Beeper imo), but I think it’s for the best for me to move on and find spaces I vibe with more and feel happy about being part of.

I just learned there’s a TikTok alternative called Loops, that’s part of the fediverse which I think is really cool! With TikTok getting banned I’m gonna experiment with Loops. as part of the shift I’m also experimenting with shifting my brand structure to be more of a decentralized model. Even though I still think it’s really cool to have everything under my brand @onequest.me, I don’t know if that’s possible under the current systems we have set up. Maybe in the future it could be and I’ll be open to it again later. But for now, I’ll be using onequest@domain.tld for things that are more decentralized like Loops. Where I don’t own the platform and it’s not a onequest branded space. So it’s still my identity but it’s specific to someone else’s space. That’s the plan at least and I’ll see how it feels moving forward.

A Couple Days Later….

Even though this post was originally about leaving WordPress and everything Automattic and I’ve been exploring alternative options and trying to be very specific about what I want and what things aren’t working in the current setup, I’m definitely running into some pretty big blocks.

As much as I really don’t like how Matt is approaching all the WordPress drama and being so restrictive about everything, I have been having a difficult time finding any other platform that matches the type of digital experience I want to build. Yes, there are massive gaps in the experience with the Gutenberg editor still to be addressed, and the ActivityPub integration with WordPress still leaves a lot of gaps that don’t make sense to me or feel like a happy and polished experience. But, I’m having a really difficult time figuring out how to make anything come close to the integrations they do have and the direction it’s all moving in (even though it’s all much slower and clunkier than I want right now). I could build a really beautiful personal web experience, brand and place to post all of my content on Framer (which I was exploring heavily before going all in on WordPress early last year). But, Framer doesn’t have any integrations I’ve heard of or really any incentive to connect with the Fediverse. I really want to be part of that community and pushing for a better digital experience for everyone. But I also want a digital identity that I can take with me anywhere and that I can own and customize deeply and that feels fragmented in so many ways still too. I don’t want an account for this and another for that. I don’t want emails to be the center of my digital universe and yet somehow they became the defacto standard for digital identities and communications with so many other groups/companies/people. I’m frustrated that we seem to be stuck with so many archaic digital solutions and that we’re not evolving and innovating more quickly with all the resources and energy being put into technology. Unfortunately those resources, imo, are being invested into much less impactful areas. I think they would be better used on creating a more solid foundation for digital experiences that improves digital identities and all the connected systems to work together more seamlessly and openly. A space like the Fediverse, but much more refined, polished, and personalizable for tall things digital and for all people.

Wouldn’t that be cool? I feel like we could totally do it, but I’m not sure who to talk to about it or if I’m too naive or so many other things. Maybe it’s stupid to some, or maybe it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’m simplifying too much. I don’t know, but it sounds like a great system to work towards to me and all great things are built on solid systems I think. I’m pretty sure the one we built for tech is pretty flimsy and fractured and we desperately need a new one.

I don’t know where to get involved with conversations like this, and I’m also nervous that I’l have to sign up for yet another account or special app for coordinating with people who are talking about these things. Which I would be willing to do in the short term to help build this, but it’s so weird to me that everything is so fragmented and disjointed and that to build a better system we have to use (and in a way support) that broken system first. Maybe not, but that’s what it feels like.

I’ve been reading about how people like Joost de Valk are trying to maybe build something like this and I think it might be a great place to begin, but again, how do I contact and coordinate? I don’t have Bluesky, Twitter, or any other space that a lot of people are using. I could try Mastodon, but I don’t think they have DM’s. There is a contact form and I guess that’s probably the best bet. Another question is, would I be able to help? I’m not a developer and I don’t really want to be, but I can build incredible systems and design amazing experiences. And I feel like that’s more of what we need right now anyway. So, personally I think I could help but I’m not sure how to communicate all of those things or if anyone else will understand.