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WordPress Is at It Again!
It’s true: in cyberspace, no one (at least no one at WordPress) can hear you scream. Why do I say this? Because for the last two-and-a-half years, WordPress has been steadily auto-unsubscribing my subscribers faster than they’re signing up. But this apparently wasn’t fast enough, so they’ve started lopping off Antarctic iceberg-sized chunks. A few weeks ago, while I slept, they unsubscribed over 700 subscribers in one swell foop! Result? Half of my “new” subscribers are actually re-subscribers. Still, the majority have no idea what’s happened, and go on to live sad, Mitchless lives.
So I contacted the good ol’ WP, and here’s what I learned:
2/3rds of My Email Subscribers Never Receive Them!
A very pleasant AI Agent told me this was because a majority of my email subscribers are either “Bounced” or “Paused.” “Which means what?” I queried. The friendly AI Agent explained:
Bounced…
…means a subscriber’s email account is set up to block (“bounce” back) some or all emails from WordPress. When this happens, it makes WordPress look like a spammer, and WordPress (understandably) doesn’t like that, so they “suspend” that email subscription. In order to be unsuspended ⇒ the subscriber needs to “whitelist” me with their email provider. (Which sounds kind of racist but it simply means to add me to your pre-approved emails.)
Paused…
…means that, despite having signed up to receive emails from me, the subscriber has actually turned off the option of receiving emails from WordPress. Once again, this “suspends” their subscription. So, to receive emails of my blog posts ⇒ the subscriber needs to turn emails back on in their WordPress Settings.
“But why, since this is happening to huge numbers of people, is WordPress unsubscribing them, instead of informing them about the problem and telling them what to do?”
“I don’t know,” AI replied. “That’s a very good question!” So AI connected me to a HE (Happiness Engineer) who told me AI was “confused.” If I want this to stop happening, the HE (who may actually have been a SHE or a THEY) very helpfully suggested that I tell all of my subscribers how to fix the problem (see above) in a blog post like this one.
“Which the people affected by this problem will never actually see!” I screamed into cyberspace.
I think I like my new AI friend a little better than HE.
Coincidentally I spoke to a techy yoga friend today. There is a lot going on behind the scenes because of AI hacking. Security leaks are a huge issue in many companies on the web. The surface disruptions are one thing, but what is really happening is bigger. 🙏🏻
🙏 indeed, Val.
There are a lot of email issues, especially with WordPress. It’s odd.
Yep. I don’t know why, and I don’t think they do either, Chanel.
😳🤔 Good to know!
This is one of the funniest things (probably the mostest funniest) all week. I’m not surprised.
Thanks, Graham. Even when I’m serious, my tongue is in my cheek.
Yikes! What a conundrum. Here’s to sorting it out.
Thanks, Christopher!
Thank you for the explanation. I wondered why so many of my few subscribers were pause.
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Thanks for the explanation. I wondered many of my subscribers were paused.
I seriously doubt 700 of your subscribers have set their email to reject emails from WordPress. That doesn’t make sense.
YIKES!!!
That is wild Mitch! I am so glad your AI Agent was there to help and that you knew the right questions to ask. Last but not least, I am glad I wasn’t booted off! ~Kamina
Me too, Kamina!
I liked this only because I agree, WP is weird.
That’s so awful, Mitch!!! WP drives me crazy with how they continually ‘upgrade’ with no notification prior.
My block editor will change overnight. And I don’t have auto updates chosen. Annoying.
But this proves you’re having is much worse!
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They do it to my little blog, also. I thought WP just didn’t like my complaint about the pop-up adverts they added to my site.
!!
Maybe this is God’s way of pointing you toward Substack, Mitch. I want to make that move myself.
Yeah there are certain cases where people are left wondering if WordPress is playing mind games with us
It feels that way, doesn’t it, Zuhaib.
Some of my readers who read every post I publish occasionally find that WordPress has ‘unsubscribed’ them. Lucky for me, they notice they’re not seeing my posts and they re-subscribe, but I’ll never know how many wee unsubscribed and didn’t even notice. Meanwhile, I have over 1,000 views from bots every day! Sheesh.
Yeah, we’re all being data-scanned by AI these days, Jill, especially from China.
Good grief—the problems of modern technology.😵💫
I personally went through my subscribers list very recently and I unsubscribed those who have bounced mentioned which there was a lot of them and and there was one that was obviously spam to me. So, I unsubscribed that one too.
The ones that say who have paused their emails, I left alone because I wasn’t sure from researching if by removing I effect them a different way from following like say following via the Reader. Although, I suspect they don’t even do that.
And while looking at the remaining subscribers list I think who are they? There are many who I have never interacted with me or vice versa me with them. So, my subscribers list is not really large as it first seems.
Many people will be surprised by how many are not really subscribers.
I now check back every few days so I keep an eye on any new subscribers. Because I am ready with clicking the unsubscribe button the minute I see bounce. Or if I suspect they are spam.
The bounce effect isn’t generally their fault, Liz, but I get why you would do that. And, yes, we all have lots of subscribers who visited once so we’d subscribe to them, and never came back. Plus, a lot of people post blogs, but never visit anyone else’s.
Regarding the “paused”, includes that turning off (email) notifications overall? Because, like there’re two options to get notified: emails and simple popup notifications (e.g. via the app on desktop or mobile).
Or specifically email notifications? Because I have them off as well, but use the apps, so I’d get it there
Plus, I don’t exactly get why they pause people plainly because they don’t have (email?) notifications on. Maybe the prefer not to receive hundreds on them
I’m afraid I don’t know, Samy. WordPress is hard to navigate.
This was very helpful, Mitch. Although my follower list of about 600 pales in comparison to yours, I noticed a few “new” subscribers who had been long-time followers, but evidently stopped getting posts. I’ve also never been able to get a good answer from WP about reconciling statistics i.e. views verses itemized posts, etc. I will say that although the AI has been helpful at times, I’ve always had wonderful help from the Happiness Engineers – most notably after AI gave me a totally erroneous response. Again, a very helpful post for bloggers. Dirt
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Ah the forever challenges of this plarform. Hence the count down over at iMCreative.
Ah, WordPress works in mysterious ways sometimes. I’d no idea that this could happen tbh. Thanks for highlighting this issue.
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I never knew about this, even though I do look at my stats periodically. I saw that a lot of my emails aren’t being sent either. I didn’t know why though. Thanks for sharing this. I hope it gets resolved and soon….
Thank you, Nikki.
this happened to me when i tried to block a spammer and i noticed it blocked all of my wordpress messages and postings, when i wasn’t getting any responses. i then had to work to ‘unblock’ everyone again.
Oy! How frustrating, Beth.
Frustrating but very 😂🤣…🧡
Thanks, Renate. 🧡
I don’t know why, because this same thing has happened to several of the bloggers I follow – but it has never happened to me. I don’t subscribe to any blogs via email, because I don’t want to weed through all those emails. Maybe the reason mine is unaffected (so far) is because my followers subscribed at a time when email notification wasn’t a requirement 🤷♀️ I don’t know the answer, Mitch. I share your frustration at not being able to speak with a real human being when we have issues. It’s everywhere in life these days, and honestly, I resent that it’s being crammed down our throats. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to have our own bots answer our phones and make our calls and have the bot callers press 1,2,3,4,5,6, etc and hold for long periods of time with annoying music. Once connection is made, the bots can argue with each other. How would the companies like that? Oops … it looks like your post was a soapbox trigger for me.
You used the soapbox well, Terry!
Hmmmmm…me thinks this is but a taste of what our world will be like when and likely if, we are governed by the machines…
😱
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WordPress seems to be caught up in a whirlpool of inefficiency.
Hear, hear!
Well, that is certainly something to be concerned about. But, have no fear, Mitch! I receive every email in my in-box!
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I don’t email-subscribe to anything, I just check the Reader everyday for new posts. . . However I do get email notices about activity on my posts – Likes or Comments. I suppose just I’m too small for WP to mess with my subscribers
Yes that is funny. I have been unsubscribed from people’s blogs several times but I think I’ve resubscribed to most of them. However, it is easy to forget about someone if they don’t post often.(hmm whatever happened to him/her?)
WP can be very persnickety sometimes. It has unsubscribed me from sites I didn’t unsubscribe from, and it has unsubscribed many of my followers. No doubt some readers unsubscribed on their own, but when a hundred people vanish from the rolls simultaneously, for no apparent reason, I get suspicious.
I see it more as a community of writers, than readers. Always have for some reason. So, in my view, emails are already clogged enough with superfluity, and wading through emails to find WP posts seems cumbersome. So — I never subcribe email-wise, just WP-reader-wise. This way, when I want ot read people I go check my reader. Of vourse WP went through a phase where they automatically setup any new subscribe relationship to include email notifications. Which seems crazy to me. This is why we need a gazillion data centers… everythin on the internet appears there a thousand times in various forms and locations. Yikes. Plus, mustn’t it be the case bu now that entirel AI wordpress ‘writers’ blogs exist and are subscribed to by totally AI readres? Double-yikes.
Yep. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Wow, that’s a lot. I’ve noticed a lot of chatbots subscribing to my blog, so I’m expecting WordPress to drop those subscriptions soon.
I’ve been noticing similar things.