The fatal error recovery email goes to an address nobody reads

5.2 catches a fatal error during a plugin load, deactivates the plugin, and emails a recovery link to the administration email address — which on most sites is a role account created in 2014.

// where it goes
get_option( 'admin_email' );

// where it should go
add_filter( 'recovery_mode_email', function ( $email ) {
    $email['to'] = '[email protected]';

    return $email;
} );

// and the constant that turns the whole mechanism off
// define( 'WP_DISABLE_FATAL_ERROR_HANDLER', true );

The mechanism is genuinely good and its default delivery is where it falls down: a site that white-screens sends one email to an unmonitored inbox and then presents a degraded site to everyone else. Redirecting it to whatever people actually read is two lines. Turning the handler off entirely is the right call for a site with real error tracking, because a silently deactivated plugin is a harder problem to diagnose than a stack trace.