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Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

wordpress.org

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

#21

Post by sleavey »

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.

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

#22

Post by kreykjalin »

jonny383 wrote: post #5
marpstar wrote: post #3

glad I'm not the only one who was annoyed by this. it's not a huge deal, but it made me "WTF?"

I disagree - to me, it _is_ a huge deal. It's an overstep of a boundary that definitely should not have been crossed. Yoast has always been borderline spammy with their upgrade nags, but at least historically they followed the WordPress guidelines and kept them inside of the Yoast pages. But flat-out injecting ads into every admin page with not much context is a step too far in my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, au…

>As far as I'm concerned, automattic should revoke their wordpress.org plugin hosting until this has been addressed

Unfortunately Automattic only contributes to WordPress.org [0]. Automattic actually owns WordPress.com [1] which is a separate-ish entity, and does not have any authority over plugins hosted on WordPress.org.

[0] https://automattic.com/

[1] https://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

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

#23

Post by dazc »

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.

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

#24

Post by dazc »

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?

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

#26

Post by csunbird »

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://…

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I doubt the company or the CEO actually cares at all.

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

#27

Post by skrebbel »

For those not deep into the WP community reading this headline: Yoast injected an ad into the WP admin pages (every admin page), not into public WP sites. The headline sounds much worse than it is - this is just an annoyance for editors, not Yoast abusing its reach to target billions of worldwide website readers.

Naturally that doesn't excuse the spam.

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

#28

Post by steve19 »

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?

It is because a lot of functionality is now bundled as part of the Automattic Jet Pack plugin. I guess the plugin is technically open source (due to the GPL) , but a lot of functionality depends on Automattic's server and requires a subscription.

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

#29

Post by cally »

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.

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

#30

Post by nsomaru »

sleavey wrote: post #20

I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free version that spams you to upgrade to "pro". They add menu items to the admin panel with different colours so you find it harder to ignore them. They add messages to the dashboard. The look and feel of their settings pages don't match WordPress core. And, even if yo…

Have you released this plugin?
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