Does Jetpack mislead users to promote WordPress.com?

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Recently, while browsing Facebook, we found several people sharing links where WordPress had replaced the site domain, with the status reading: Michelle Schulp published an article in WordPress.

Clicking the link will take you to the website, but clicking on WordPress will take you to a WordPress.com login page on Facebook.

Landing page for WordPress.com's app

We further checked if these sites were hosted on WordPress.com, a blog hosting service. Most of them were not. (see the difference between free WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org )

However, they all had one thing in common. They all used the Jetpack plugin, developed by WordPress.com's parent company, Automattic.

To verify our findings, we installed Jetpack on a test site. We replicated the issue, and it is related to the plugin's publish feature.

When setting up the publishing feature, you will be list of cameroon cell phone number asked to connect with Facebook and grant several permissions.

Facebook permissions for using Publicize feature in JetPack

Allowing WordPress.com to post on Facebook for you

During the approval process, you see the blue W logo instead of the gray W logo. What's the difference?

Well, one is for WordPress.com (the blog hosting service) and the other is for WordPress.org (the software we all love and use).

Confusing, isn't it?

Often beginners don't know the difference, so they think they are really authorizing their WordPress website and not a third-party WordPress.com platform (see the relationships and differences )

Also, the wording throughout the process is not clear that you are authorizing WordPress.com and not your actual website. See the confirmation screenshot below: