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Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

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Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#31

Post by LordAtlas »

dazc wrote: post #23
withinrafael wrote: post #12

The Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt responded on Twitter: > That BlackFridayBanner was not the best idea. We’re truly sorry for the annoyance and difficulties it may have caused. We did not think this through properly. If you want, you can update to a new version of our plugin without that banner. #blackfriday #neveragain #apologies"[1] > I OK'd this. I am the CEO. And I made a big mistake. I am sorry. [2] [1] https://…

Hardly the first time Yoast have been forced into an embarrassing climb-down. In the early days of mass Wordpress adoption they got a lot of traction by offering a plug-in that made few basic seo improvements and that early success went to their heads. Every iteration since has been a bloated mess of features, most of which are entirely unnecessary.

You know it's a bloated mess when there actually exist another plugin to hide all the bloat that Yoast adds. I kid you not. https://wordpress.org/plugins/so-clean-up-wp-seo/

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#32

Post by LordAtlas »

dazc wrote: post #24
JacobSeated wrote: post #16

Well, people need to learn not to depend on redundant Wordpress plugins. The plugin-landscape in Wordpress is plagued by bugs and ads, some spamming you to update or pay for a premium version. That is not something you would accept for professional CMS solutions. If you consider yourself knowledgeable in SEO, then learn to walk the talk and stop relying on phony third-party plugins! SEO is such a small part of owning…

'Since Wordpress is such "crapware" out-of-the-box, you can easily create a Yoast replacement plugin ...' The cynic in me wonders why such basics are not already included by now?

Because of Matt Mullenweg's strange philosophy of keeping only barebones features in "core" Wordpress and having all other functionality be delivered by plugins. This means that even to have a basic site, you just have to install various plugins to deliver key features, which leads to the bloat, instability and security problems that Wordpress is infamous for.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#33

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

sleavey wrote: post #21
withinrafael wrote: post #12

The Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt responded on Twitter: > That BlackFridayBanner was not the best idea. We’re truly sorry for the annoyance and difficulties it may have caused. We did not think this through properly. If you want, you can update to a new version of our plugin without that banner. #blackfriday #neveragain #apologies"[1] > I OK'd this. I am the CEO. And I made a big mistake. I am sorry. [2] [1] https://…

> "Truly sorry" I'd prefer it if CEOs would rather say "we got too greedy and clearly the market didn't like it" rather than disingenuous apologies.

I have a lot more respect for a response that contains the words "sorry" and a statement that the entity admits that they made a mistake, vs. the usual corporate statement that contains neither.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#34

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

cally wrote: post #29
diminish wrote: post #17

this was the worst spam of all my wordpress experience. a yoast banner on every admin page - yoast must have gone crazy. I took screenshots of this shameful moment. wordpress plugin as well as mobile app stores are reminiscent of the ugly pc shareware and freewares of past 30 decades.

I don't use wordpress/yoast so am probably wrong. But I don't think splashscreens on shareware is 'ugly', I think it's fair enough. In some instances - such as Sublime Text - I am amazed at how discreet it is.

I suspect Sublime realizes that they have three classes of customers:

1. Companies

2. Private individuals who are happy to pay for software

3. Private individuals who aren't going to pay for software

The discreet notification is enough to get 1+2 to pay. Group 3 isn't going to pay anyways, and making the notification more annoying will just make it more likely that they crack it and never see it again. Most importantly, when people from group 3 start working at a company, they may get the company to buy a license (which is now a subscription, i.e. makes them a lot more money than a personal license).

A more annoying notification would likely win them very little, and lose them a lot (from people who use a different editor instead).

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#36

Post by Angostura »

LordAtlas wrote: post #32
dazc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Since Wordpress is such "crapware" out-of-the-box, you can easily create a Yoast replacement plugin ...' The cynic in me wonders why such basics are not already included by now?

Because of Matt Mullenweg's strange philosophy of keeping only barebones features in "core" Wordpress and having all other functionality be delivered by plugins. This means that even to have a basic site, you just have to install various plugins to deliver key features, which leads to the bloat, instability and security problems that Wordpress is infamous for.

> strange philosophy

He likes to avoid bloat and keep things modular. That's not a 'strange' philosophy

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#37

Post by creshal »

tuananh wrote: post #35

i haven't used wp in a long time. does it come with permission settings for plugins now?

The plugin exists to inject seo-relevant tags into your page, so I don't see how a permission system would help to prevent them from injecting other tags into your page.

And no, there's no real capability system for plugins in Wordpress. Plugins can define their own user permissions that hooks into WP's system to determine what user can use what feature, but that's entirely opt in on the plugins' part.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#38

Post by creshal »

Angostura wrote: post #36
LordAtlas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of Matt Mullenweg's strange philosophy of keeping only barebones features in "core" Wordpress and having all other functionality be delivered by plugins. This means that even to have a basic site, you just have to install various plugins to deliver key features, which leads to the bloat, instability and security problems that Wordpress is infamous for.

> strange philosophy He likes to avoid bloat and keep things modular. That's not a 'strange' philosophy

Modularity isn't free. Wordpress' obsession with it – and bad implementation of it – leads to bizarre, 80000+ recursion level deep callback hells even on simple pages once you have 3-4 plugins running.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#39

Post by asadkn »

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading.

- It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam.

- The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area.

- It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that.

Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as nefarious as everyone is making it sound like.

WP.org is about freedom, so they're unlikely to restrict it either unless malicious: https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-plugin-guidelines/pull/69...

Being very involved in the WordPress industry, what I find funny is the majority of angry reviews masquerading as victims are from entitled pseudo devs who sell WordPress sites to clients and now they were made to look bad because they had automatic updates enabled while charging their customers for a retainer package with "plugin & themes updates".

How about buying premium version in the first place just as you charged your client for it.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#40

Post by jonny383 »

asadkn wrote: post #39

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading. - It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam. - The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area. - It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that. Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as n…

1. It goes directly against the WordPress Detailed Plugin Guidelines to both upsell, and to hijack the admin dashboard [0].

2. If the ad was an admin notice, it didn't look like one. It's a banner image with an outbound tracking link [1].

[0] https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detail... [1] https://imgur.com/a/oN7ZFRU

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