It is an age-old question. OK, well, it’s really a 10-year-old feature request, but that is age-old in software development years. Should WordPress have a local avatar system?
Let’s be honest. Most of us have kind of gritted our teeth and quietly — and sometimes not so quietly — lived with the Automattic-owned properties that are integrated directly with the core WordPress software. At least Akismet is a plugin and somewhat detached from the platform. But, avatars, a feature courtesy of Automattic’s Gravatar service, is baked deep into the platform. Users must disable avatars completely or opt into another plugin
