Why is Naomi Cannon bashing MariaDB?

10 days ago, an article by Naomi Cannon on Reddit caught my attention; it included a link to the full article on Medium.

As I read through the article, I didn’t notice any major errors or false statements. What surprised me a bit was the detailed, technical knowledge in this article, which is unusual for a typical tech blogger.

What bothered me about this article was that she mainly bashed MariaDB without offering any meaningful or useful conclusions or advice on what to do (e.g., using InnoDB instead of always jumping on the latest bandwagon, or using a different database product, etc.). So, a lot of ranting about MariaDB but no practical outcome.

That annoyed me a bit, even though I’m not exactly the biggest fan of MariaDB (the company!) myself anymore.

In Search of Naomi Cannon

So I set out to find Naomi Cannon…

On Reddit, I saw that this Naomi Cannon had only been registered there for 3 days (September 11!). Her username was a bit strange: Naomi Cannon, CannonAndQuill, Ready_Turnip_8812, and it was her first post on Reddit!

Her self-description on Reddit:

I’m Naomi, an Irish tech blogger who spends half my time writing about software and the other half wondering why I agreed to work in tech at all.

I then followed her on Medium. There, she had also only been registered for 3 days (September 11!) and this was her first post there as well.

Her self-description on Medium:

I’m Naomi Cannon, an Irish blogger based near Dublin. I write about software, data, and the everyday realities of working in Ireland’s tech scene.

Her name was also a bit strange: 58-fidgety-vile.

That sounds like synthetic names that may have been generated.

Social media

OK. For a tech blogger, it’s important to have a presence somewhere—or everywhere—and thus be well-known. So I conducted a search on Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Ecosia and DuckDuckGo. Without any notable success. That’s rather strange for a tech blogger.

I also didn’t find a profile on the social networks LinkedIn and Facebook that would match her.

The Google Lens image search did show me a few women who look very similar to Naomi, but none with the same name.

AI Opinions

I also asked three AI systems for their opinions.

kimi.com says:

I tried to dig up background on the author, but honestly there’s very little to be found — which is itself telling. What I can confirm:

• The article exists: “MariaDB and the Mystery of the Disappearing Storage Engines” by “Naomi Cannon,” published very recently on Medium (the listing showed it as roughly 2 hours old when indexed).

• It discusses how MariaDB has adopted and then abandoned numerous storage engines over the years. The Reddit discussion about the article’s premise exists on r/mariadb

What I could not find:

• Any biography, LinkedIn, GitHub, conference talks, or other publications under the name “Naomi Cannon” related to databases or MariaDB. A search for “Naomi Cannon” together with MariaDB returned zero results.
• A few things about the account are unusual: the Medium handle is @58-fidgety-vile, which is the auto-generated style of username Medium assigns to brand-new accounts, and the display name looks like a generic pseudonym rather than an established byline.

So the honest answer: Naomi Cannon appears to be either a brand-new or pseudonymous writer with no discernible public track record — and given the random auto-generated handle plus a polished, timely technical article published on a fresh account, this has the common hallmarks of AI-generated content-farm accounts that have proliferated on Medium. I can’t prove that, but I’d treat the article’s claims as something to verify against MariaDB’s official documentation and mailing lists rather than trusting the author’s credibility. The topic itself (MariaDB’s history of deprecated storage engines like Aria, TokuDB, MyRocks, Spider, etc.) is legitimate and worth reading about from primary sources if it interests you.

The Google search says:

I do not have direct access to live internet browsing or specific Medium user profile details, so I cannot look up information about Naomi Cannon or read the exact contents of the article you linked. However, looking at the URL you provided, there are a couple of clues that suggest this might not be a real or permanently established person:

• The Random URL Handle: The username in the link (@58-fidgety-vile) uses a system-generated, randomized format. This typically points to an anonymous, throwaway, or newly created account rather than a public tech writer or developer.
• Potential AI Generation: Technical storytelling titles like “MariaDB and the Mystery of the Disappearing Storage Engines” are frequently generated by AI or written under aliases for SEO, blog spamming, or quick technical tutorials.

If you want to investigate further, could you copy and paste a few paragraphs of the article, or share the author’s bio if one is listed on the page? I can help you analyze the technical context of the MariaDB issue or check if the writing style seems AI-generated.

And DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai (using GPT-5.6 Luna) says:

I couldn’t find reliable public information establishing who Naomi Cannon is. The Medium link and the associated profile currently return no readable content, and searches for her name and the article title didn’t reveal a verifiable biography, professional profile, or other clearly connected publications.

The only solid information available from the link itself is that an account using the handle @58-fidgety-vile published an article titled MariaDB and the Mystery of the Disappearing Storage Engines. That alone isn’t enough to identify the author or confirm that “Naomi Cannon” is a real-world identity rather than a pen name or an attribution attached to the post.

The article’s technical topic suggests familiarity with MariaDB and database storage engines, but that’s an inference from the subject matter—not evidence of the author’s background.

Thanks to a tip from my sister, I had already tried using the AI tool Pangram to see if this article was generated by an AI. Here’s what Pangram had to say (click on the image for the full screenshot):

Personal Contact

To be on the safe side, I also tried to reach out to Naomi personally on Reddit to get her response:

Hi Naomi

I read your article “MariaDB has adopted and abandoned about a dozen storage engines. Any reason TidesDB and DuckDB go differently?” from September 11, 2026. An interesting article! At a quick glance, I couldn’t find any inaccuracies in it. And your article delves quite deeply into the subject, both technically and historically. For an “outsider”, the article is remarkable. You must have spent days researching it, right?

But what’s the point of this critical article? What do I take away from it? What’s the main message?

Naturally, this raises some questions for me:

• Did you research all this information yourself, or did someone pass it on to you?
• Who are you? You just appeared out of nowhere? I couldn’t find anything about you online. What other technical articles do you publish? For a blogger, that’s pretty sparse information.
• What motivated you to write this article? How do you fund your work? The research required for this article is immense!

I’d appreciate it if you could shed some light on this matter.

Best regards, Oli

Unfortunately, as of today (7 days later), I still haven’t received a reply from Naomi. I waited a while before publishing this blog post to give her a fair chance to respond.

Conclusion

So we can conclude the following:

• It is highly likely that this is a fake account on both Reddit and Medium. Possibly even automatically generated?
• The article is very likely AI-generated.

But what’s all this bashing about MariaDB, and who started it?

I suspect the whole thing was a FUD campaign against MariaDB.

According to Google AI, a FUD campaign is:

A FUD campaign (short for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) is a targeted communication or marketing strategy in which negative, vague, or false information is deliberately spread to undermine confidence in a product, company, brand, or technology (such as cryptocurrencies).

Goals of a FUD campaign

• Uncertainty: The target audience or investors are meant to doubt the security, quality, or future of an offering.
• Competitive advantage: Competitors or differing standards are meant to be portrayed in a negative light in order to better position one’s own products.
• Steering Behavior: People are to be pressured into taking a specific action—for example, selling stocks or crypto assets, or switching to another provider.

Typical Characteristics

• Use of emotional arguments instead of factual information.
• Spreading half-truths, rumors, or exaggerated risk scenarios.
• Frequent use in anonymous or hard-to-control online channels and social media.

And who’s supposed to have done this?

Naomi mentions “Ireland” in her profile. Ireland is home to the headquarters of numerous U.S. tech companies… That’s all the clues I have.

We could try contacting Reddit and Medium to get more information. But I’m afraid that won’t yield anything useful.

Addendum

And lo and behold: “Naomi” replied on Medium yesterday (September 21, 2026):

Kids, this is what is known as an Ad hominem fallacy. Don’t be like Oli.

And there was also a response on Reddit:

Who I am, how old the account is, and whether I answer emails from strangers has nothing to do with whether MariaDB has a history of dropping storage engines. That’s an ad hominem, and it doesn’t belong in a technical discussion.

The article makes specific claims. If any of them are wrong, point to which one and I’ll correct it. Anna did exactly that with a couple of points and I respect her for engaging with the substance. Digging into who’s behind an account and promising “more details” isn’t a rebuttal. It’s a way of avoiding one.

The question is still sitting there. If you’re running production on MariaDB with anything other than InnoDB, what assurance do you have that it’ll still be supported in five years? I’d rather talk about that.

The AI at kimi.com suggests that Naomi’s comments from yesterday were likely written by humans and possibly AI-assisted. Pangram, however, is convinced that both comments were 100% generated by an AI.

Equally intriguing is that there are two Anna Widenius (CEO of the MariaDB Foundation) on Reddit:

I’ll check into it…

Update 2

Something strange is going on here! My comment and Naomi’s reply have suddenly disappeared from Medium: “PAGE NOT FOUND 404.”

That was a copy-and-paste mistake!

Update 3

Another mystery has been solved: AnnaW has just confirmed that both Reddit accounts and the Medium account are hers and are therefore genuine!

This page was translated using deepl.com.