The current Gravatar implementation is painful from a UX and privacy situation. The worst thing is that it even smells a little bit fishy.

Let me explain why:

Today I had to change our organization email address in our account on wordpress.org.

Due to that, our avatar image was gone. It's obvious why; I changed the mail address, so gravatar lost the connection. Not a big deal, I trust Automattic and have no issues with adding our new mail address to wordpress.com. (Another user might not think same as I do but this is another topic)

Here comes what smells: When you go to gravatar.com for the sake of adding a new avatar image, you are required to go through the normal wordpress.com registration process. That process does not differentiate between me as an experienced developer who only wants to add an avatar to his wordpress.org account and a user who wants to use the wordpress.com service for creating a hosted blog or something else.

So, I've created the new wordpress.com account, and WordPress immediately added me into the sales/registration funnel for adding a new domain and a hosted wordpress.com website.

I got a marketing mail instantly in my inbox that I am " a few steps closer to creating a great website."

Please, I didn't want this. I didn't want to use any of the wordpress.com hosted services, and I was not particularly eager to get any marketing emails from you when I did not explicitly give you my consent.

I only wanted to create an avatar image for my public wordpress.org account, where I am very active every day. I did not expect wordpress.com was trying to pull me into their hosted ecosystem that aggressively.

After checking account privacy settings, it turned out that the system automatically activated my account to share my information with the wordpress.com analytics tool. https://monosnap.com/file/rLV9jaKQnTiQIKvS5lXmsqYsPwjabj?idx=0&total=65

It opted me in instantly after registration, and I had to unsubscribe from it manually —the same as with the marketing emails.

I don't think this is the correct way how you do it, and I'd appreciate it if you take the user's privacy more seriously.

Frankly, I am more than a little bit surprised or better say disappointed how Automattic handles this, especially as we as small plugin developers have to take care a lot not to break any rules.

Jeff wrote an interesting article in 2016 about a similar bad experience he had with the gravatar service. It did not touch much the privacy issues, but it's still up to date: https://wptavern.com/managing-gravatars-in-wordpress-is-a-jarring-user-experience

Please give us users the option to upload a local avatar, especially on wordpress.org.

Thank you🙏