@jwz @anildash You're right. The article is hot garbage and seems confused, and I read my own better understanding into it.

Here's the announcement from March when they added the plugin for plans that supported it: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/03/17/making-the-social-web-a-better-place-activitypub-for-wordpress-joins-the-automattic-family/

The official announcement of the new thing is better-written: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/10/11/activitypub/

""On Free, Personal, and Premium sites, you can enter the fediverse through your settings (see how below); for Business and Commerce sites, simply install the ActivityPub plugin and follow the prompts to set up your profile." (free, personal, and Premium don't support plugins, so they couldn't support AP before)