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> WordPress powers over 40% of the web, which, given these numbers, could lead to a significant payday for the company What? 40% of the web is definitely not h

> WordPress powers over 40% of the web, which, given these numbers, could lead to a significant payday for the company What? 40% of the web is definitely not hosted by Automattic. > But every public website can also be scraped directly by AI vendors Exactly. So platforms are only facilitating the AI vendors' job by offering a bulk data transfer. There might be a indemnification clause somewhere which is probably covered by the platform's ToS extensively. The issue is if AI vendors have a right to use public data to train their models the same way you train your brain by reading the content yourself. This will be settled in court soon enough, IMHO. The article tries to cause outrage but lacks substance.

CaptainFever 3y ago
Right, not to mention that in many countries including EU countries, we already have laws that protect AI trainers. Google TDM exemptions. This isn't really an issue IMO; public data can already legally be used to train AI regardless of what platforms are doing with it.
dougb5 3y ago
I was skeptical of that 40% too so I went looking for the basis for it. It's not totally unfounded: https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management estimates that WordPress is used by 63% of all websites that use content management systems, and they estimate 31% use no content management system at all, so it concludes that WordPress is used by 43% of all websites. The thing is, though, this is not weighted by page views or time spent or any meaningful measure of usage. None of the top 20 websites use WordPress (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201901/most-visited-websites-worldwide-time-visit/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201901/most-visited-web...) "WordPress powers over 40% of the web" misleads people into thinking it's 40% of everything people view, but I doubt that is true.
- iainctduncan 3y ago
  Lies, damned lies, and statistics! What a perfect example. :-)
- gtirloni 3y ago
  WordPress is an open source project that anyone can host. That 40% number is probably true for WordPress installations. Not all WordPress installations are hosted at Automattic (the company). Thus it's hard to understand how 40% of all websites using WP will give a huge payout to Automattic for sharing their customers' data (which is minor subset of all WP installations out there that make up that 40% number).

CaptainFever 3y ago

Right, not to mention that in many countries including EU countries, we already have laws that protect AI trainers. Google TDM exemptions. This isn't really an issue IMO; public data can already legally be used to train AI regardless of what platforms are doing with it.

dougb5 3y ago

I was skeptical of that 40% too so I went looking for the basis for it. It's not totally unfounded: https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management estimates that WordPress is used by 63% of all websites that use content management systems, and they estimate 31% use no content management system at all, so it concludes that WordPress is used by 43% of all websites. The thing is, though, this is not weighted by page views or time spent or any meaningful measure of usage. None of the top 20 websites use WordPress (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201901/most-visited-websites-worldwide-time-visit/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201901/most-visited-web...) "WordPress powers over 40% of the web" misleads people into thinking it's 40% of everything people view, but I doubt that is true.

iainctduncan 3y ago
Lies, damned lies, and statistics! What a perfect example. :-)
gtirloni 3y ago
WordPress is an open source project that anyone can host. That 40% number is probably true for WordPress installations. Not all WordPress installations are hosted at Automattic (the company). Thus it's hard to understand how 40% of all websites using WP will give a huge payout to Automattic for sharing their customers' data (which is minor subset of all WP installations out there that make up that 40% number).