It's a system that's based on trust, but the auto-update that is active in WordPress has saved millions of sites of getting hacked in the last few weeks: https://ma.ttias.be/in-defence-of-wordpress/
As soon as something major breaks by those auto-updates, the trust is over and a lot of users will disable it. That would be a shame indeed, because besides a couple of WSOD's some users may experience, it's an extremely powerful feature.
Re:Remind HN: Update your wordpress sites
by federicobond on Thursday May 14, 2015 @10:44AM
(#9545431)
There is also "define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', 'minor' );" which should break a lot less.
I wonder how a less tech-savy person would have resolved that. Even being tech-savy, I had to ask someone for help.
Updates of core and plugins are always very scary to me.