Also, the block editor is incredibly, horribly slow. It runs about 1/20 as fast as the classic editor. Sometimes my input lags 2-4 characters behind my typing. And it’s slow in all other ways, too. It’s just so bad I’d think it was a joke if someone demoed to me and I didn’t know anything about it.
But it’s a real product someone released with full knowledge. The world is run by the mediocre.
I wonder if block editing is part of a nudge to discourage the last remaining bloggers and commenters to get everyone into what remains of terrible social media before the internet becomes all ads all the time.
I hate everything that’s happened to the digital environment in the last 15 years sooooo much.
Sometimes, the block model and other similar travesties perpetrated by other orgs (like Mozilla) do seem like part of a grand strategy to drive people away from anything accessible by a non-specialist. Then everyone is as you observe forced to social media where their data can be far more easily hoovered up and their activities tracked.
I do think there is something to that, but also believe that in most orgs the fanatics eventually end up running the place. That appears to have happened at Automattic as most long-time WordPress users were extremely opposed to Gutenberg and the block model and all the other harmful changes.
But what do I know? Automattic had revenue of $850 million last year. Which does make me wonder how much making WP 100x more complex is just about corporate lock-in. It’s a lot, lot harder to switch away from when you have a team of devs building custom blocks and custom everything else.