I’ve gotten a few emails and this topic has been coming up on the blogs I check in the morning.  It appears that WordPress and Tumblr are selling data to Midjourney and OpenAI.  Before we get into some of the details, please understand that it appears that this will be for wordpress.com sites, and not self-hosted (wordpress.org) sites.  Now, let’s get into some details.

What’s Happening With Automattic Selling Data

A majority of the information I got, at least that made the most sense for me, comes from the Lifehacker article “Tumblr and WordPress Are Selling Your Data to AI Companies.”

As first reported by 404 Media, the parent company for both sites sites, Automattic, has a entered into a deal to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress to AI companies like Midjourney and OpenAI. The AI companies intend to use the data to train their systems.

There were apparently some issues, even with the site, which you can read about in the Lifehacker article.

Related article:  WordPress and Tumblr will sell user data to train AI models – report

It’s Not ALL WordPress Sites

Before we get started, there’s a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.  wordpress.com is where you ‘sign up’ for WordPress (essentially) through WordPress, similarly to using Wix.com or Shopify.  You’re using their hosting and their platform to run your website.  WordPress.org is where you download the WordPress CMS (or application) and host it on your own server, like we do here at I Heart Blank.  Lifehacker also just posted an article about the differences between .org and .com with a similar explanation of what that means.

Initially, I was a little confused because WordPress (at least the way we use it) is an open-source and it’s ‘self-hosted’.  I thought it would be weird that they would start scraping data from ‘private servers’.

Automattic (who owns WordPress and Tumblr) has stated that the data selling will only effect wordpress.com sites and Tumblr.  That makes sense because they are on Automattic’s hosting, they offer ‘free’ plans, etc.

One potential caveat could be if you’re using an Automattic plugin (like Jetpack) on your site.  It could be that this will open you up to data scraping.  I’m sure there will be more news about that in the future.

What This Means For Your WordPress Site

So.  It appears that wordpress.org sites are ‘safe’ from this data scraping.  If you are on a wordpress.com site (or Tumblr, I assume) there will be an option to ‘opt out’ of this datascraping.

Automattic has even released a statement titled “Protecting User Choice,” which highlights some of the things they are doing:

…we’re doing a number of things at WordPress.com and Tumblr to give you more control over the content you’ve created.

  • We currently block, by default, major AI platform crawlers—including ones from the biggest tech companies—and update our lists as new ones launch.
  • We have a setting to discourage search engines from indexing a site on WordPress.com and Tumblr. This signals to search engines not to crawl that content or include it in search results.
  • We have added similar settings to WordPress.com and Tumblr to discourage crawling by AI companies. If you already discourage search engine indexing, this is automatically enabled.
  • We will share only public content that’s hosted on WordPress.com and Tumblr from sites that haven’t opted out.

They have also stated:

We are also working directly with select AI companies as long as their plans align with what our community cares about: attribution, opt-outs, and control. Our partnerships will respect all opt-out settings. We also plan to take that a step further and regularly update any partners about people who newly opt out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.

Privacy Settings For WordPress.com

Got a quick update (thanks to a client).  If you do have a wordpress.com site, you can get to the privacy settings by (log into your wordpress.com account) and go to Settings > General > Privacy and click the setting about preventing ‘third-party sharing’.

Final Thoughts / Summary

If you’re running your website using wordpress.com (or have a Tumblr account), you may want to keep your eye out for any ‘opt out’ options that should be coming to the platform(s).  If you’re running WordPress with wordpress.org (like websites I’ve done through I Heart Blank), there isn’t much to worry about (right now).  If you are using wordpress.org and are using Automattic plugins (like Jetpack or Askimet), you may want to keep an eye on the privacy options.