In reply to Dave Navarro Jr.

You're right about the perception, Dave, and I was one who said just turn off auto-updates. But if site owners, no matter their technical abilities or the abilities of their webmasters, devs, whatever, see WordPress as a hassle, then it doesn't matter what caused it, the damage is still done.

There does need to be better communication in future, and I'm also a little concerned about the commenter who said they had auto-updates turned off but somehow it happened anyway. I've never turned them off, but I may after all of this, and I don't want any surprises.