Audrey Capital
The following (verified) people have been significantly associated with this entity, either as a participant, contributor, promoter, or beneficiary, according to our OSINT research:
Reviews:
Matt has done a complete 180 in the past half a decade of running Automattic and, via proxies, the WordPress FOSS project and wordpress.org website. His former optimistic "open web" platitudes about free speech and good ethics have been totally thrown out the window. The new Matt Mullenweg of the past several years: - sues and threatens dozens of people - fires good guys like Jeff Chandler from the WP Tavern for allowing diverse viewpoints on the news site - bans random plugins that he and his partner (Samuel "Otto" Wood) see as non-crony competitors like WP-Spamshield - uses the WordPress Foundation as an unethical tax shelter while pretending he's not involved - bans hundreds of users from wordpress.org who dare to ask the wrong questions - tries desperately to get the attention he craves in the Bay Area - cares only about "market share" and emulating the narcissism of guys like Mark Zuckerberg, his idol - etc etc A pathethic, spineless fellow whose lost all credibility and ethics at this point... for shame! Read More
Jeff was one of the last "good" people working at the Automattic / Audrey cabal, the editor in chief at WP Tavern for many years. He tried hard to report WordPress industry news in a balanced way, and supported free speech in the comments section. Sadly he was fired by Matt Mullenweg apparently for allowing "too many" viewpoints, including comments critical of Automattic. He was subsequently interviewed by Bob Dunn (BobWP) about what happened, but the interview was almost immediately deleted, apparently Bob was threatened by Matt Mullenweg or something. This is what WordPress 2.0 looks like, the 2nd decade really of Automattic. Threats, intimidation, cronyism, and scale-or-die mentality, ethics and the open web be damned. Shame on the "yes men" who know better but stick around for the money. Read More
For whatever reason, Matt Mullenweg chose Samuel to administer the wordpress.org website despite (because) him being a sadistic man-child who picks petty fights with volunteers contributors to the WordPress project. It would seem Matt needed a reliable "yes man" who enjoyed being a power-tripping moderator because Matt desperately tries to de-emphasize that wordpress.org is 100% controlled by and favors Automattic, despite it being a legally separate non-profit entity that solicits donations from the public. Besides helping Matt to maintain this illegal tax shelter in the name of open-source software, when in fact it is just a money laundering front for Automattic that promotes their Jetpack platform (and bans competitors like WP-SpamShield), Samuel regularly slanders and attacks developers who present the slightest challenge to decisions made by the "community" on wordpress.org. In essence he is the chief propagandist for Automattic, and the backdoor into the WordPress Foundation for Automattic to play both sides. Samuel temporarily banned my plugins because I had a quote from Albert Einstein in the readme.txt file (his stated reason, but it was just because he wanted to keep harassing me). He later permanently banned me from wordpress.org after I asked to remove our plugins from their directory. This is not normal, according to their Terms any agency can ask to remove plugins at anytime, but Samuel decided to go the extra mile and ban us ==> https://profiles.wordpress.org/littlebizzy/ ==> https://wordpress.org/support/users/littlebizzy/ He also then had Automattic contact their Silicon Valley friends at Quora, and had them ban me from that platform also, not because I had broken any rules but because they asked for a favor from their fellow tech-bros, and sadly Quora agreed to do it. Samuel then bragged about getting me banned from Quora on some Reddit threads, and then stated (dishonestly) then I had "hacked" into his IRS tax returns and published them online (?) which is why I was banned from wordpress.org. Complete and utter bullshit, if I had 6-figures to waste on suing Wood and Automattic for defamation and breaking their own Terms I would do it. Read More
Brad banned me from /r/ProWordPress without any reason, and despite my not having broken any subreddit rules, only because Samuel "Otto" Wood asked him to do so out of spite and apparently Brad was eager continue his bootlicking of Automattic. Sad and pathetic. Read More