Following Layoffs, Automattic Employees Discover Leak-Catching Watermarks
As part of the company's months-long obsession with catching employees leaking internal developments to the press, staff at Wordpress parent company Automattic recently noticed individually-unique watermarks on internal sites, according to employees who spoke to 404 Media.
Automattic added the watermarks to an internal employee communications platform called P2. P2 is a WordPress product other workplaces can also use. There are hundreds of P2 sites across teams at Automattic alone; many are team-specific, but some are company-wide for announcements. The watermarks in Automattic's P2 instance are nearly invisible, rendered as a pattern overlaid on the site’s white page backgrounds. Zooming in or manually changing the background color reveals the pattern. If, for example, a journalist published a screenshot leaked to them that was taken from P2, Automattic could theoretically identify the employee who shared it.
In October, as part of a series of buyout offers meant to test employee’s loyalty to his leadership, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg issued a threat for anyone speaking to the press, saying they should “exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance.” Earlier this month, the company laid off nearly 300 people.
Many companies provide this kind of forensic watermarking for internal communications. In 2023, one watermarking startup raised $10 million. Apple and Tesla reportedly have watermarking practices for emails and other internal comms, and some game developers add watermarks to game files to catch pre-release leaks.
It’s not clear when the watermarks started appearing on P2, and Automattic has not responded to a request for comment. But Mullenweg has been warring with web hosting platform WP Engine—and as the story has developed, seemingly with his own staff—since last year.
Mullenweg started publicly accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress brand and not contributing enough to the open-source community in September. WP Engine sent Mullenweg a cease and desist demanding he “stop making and retract false, harmful and disparaging statements against WP Engine,” and he sent one back then banned WP Engine from using WordPress’ resources. Contributors to the open-source Wordpress project said they’d been kicked out of community Slack workspaces for criticizing or questioning Mullenweg’s actions. Meanwhile, Mullenweg added a required loyalty-pledge checkbox to the Wordpress.org login page demanding contributors denounce WP Engine; a judge told him he had to remove the box as part of the ongoing trial, and he replaced it with a checkbox that said “pineapple is delicious on pizza.”
Automattic employees I spoke to at the time of the October buyout offers told me that this ultimatum meant two kinds of employees: Mullenweg’s strongest supporters, and people who couldn’t afford to risk leaving their jobs. "Overall, the environment is now full of people who unequivocally support Matt's actions, and people who couldn't leave because of financial reasons (and those are mostly silent),” one employee told me.
“159 people took the offer, 8.4% of the company, the other 91.6% gave up $126M of potential severance to stay!” Mullenweg wrote in a blog post following the offer. A few weeks later, he offered another buyout window. He wrote in internal Slack messages seen by 404 Media: “New alignment offer: I guess some people were sad they missed the last window. Some have been leaking to the press and ex-employees. That's water under the bridge” So many people took him up on the combined offers that the company was “very short staffed,” he said.
Just six months later, in early April, Automattic laid off 16% of its staff—reportedly almost 300 people. Multiple people with knowledge of the severance packages offered to laid-off Automatticians told me that some employees, regardless of time spent at the company, received just nine weeks of pay.
One Automattic employee told me they don’t think anyone is shocked by the watermarking, considering Mullenweg’s ongoing campaign to find leakers, but that it’s still adding to the uncertain, demoralized environment at the company. “Can't help but feel even more paranoid now,” they said.
