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This is a bit f'd, Quora

827 points by webwright 14y ago

89a 14y ago
never understood why people bothered with this garbage Expert Sexchange 2.0
olalonde 14y ago
Also, you can't view some answers anonymously anymore (blurred out a la expertsexchange.com). Seems they are desperate for new users...
- mcphilip 14y ago
  I really hope this blows back hard on Quora. We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. Google and Facebook can mostly get away with similar violations since the large majority of users simply don't care and/or don't understand the privacy concerns, but maybe it's not too late to lash back at relatively insignificant companies like Quora for blatant disregard of privacy...
  - spinchange 14y ago
    >We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. They don't exist. Only a small subset of users even care and investors and stakeholders just want their site to succeed any way it can. While not expressly privacy-related, take a look at charts of LinkedIn stock after their massive security breach where it was revealed they weren't salting password hashes. Not only did it not dip, it rose on the news and held those gains until after the story was out of the news.
omegaworks 14y ago
The blowback from stupid share-everything policies is what will eventually collapse this social media bubble. I disabled Spotify-to-Facebook sharing completely, even though I wouldn't mind if the controls were more granular and the notifications were less obtrusive. Right now people put a lot of faith and trust in their social media providers, and the more said services violate that trust, the less users will share by default and the less valuable the services will be as a result.
blhack 14y ago
The new "social" web is really creepy. Browsing in an incognito browser and logged into nothing has sortof become my default. I don't want google chrome saving my search history, or to accidentally read an article on some news website that then broadcasts that fact to all of my facebook friends.
- vladd 14y ago
  You can no longer browse Quora while being logged out: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332978
  - _delirium 14y ago
    I'm still confused how that gets by Google. The full text shows up in search results, but is blurred by CSS for humans. Isn't that not allowed? Even experts-exchange includes the readable plaintext answers way at the bottom if you scroll down, for that reason. edit: removed discussion of googleoff/googleon directives in the HTML source. Seemed suspicious, but apparently it's something to do with Google Search Appliance.
    - relix 14y ago
      That's insane, that's a bannable offense in Google. How do they still show up in search results?
      - lucisferre 14y ago
        It's a pretty recent change, give it time.
        dasil003 14y ago
        Yeah Google better kick them to the curb on this one. Man, for all the quibbling over Google latest activity being evil or not, they still do a much better job with basic ethics than Facebook and their ilk. The non-stop attempt to actively change privacy norms by constantly defaulting existing users into more and more revealing new preferences is starting to get really irritating. Facebook I sort of have to put up with because of friends and family, but Quora I'm done with until they reverse this braindead decision. Seriously I don't know who they think they are.
diego 14y ago
I get the impression that Quora is in a tough spot because of the perceived implosion of the "social bubble" after the FB IPO. They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be demanding bold moves. I don't personally know anyone who works there, so it's pure speculation. [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  The latest round was funded nearly entirely by Adam D'Angelo and Peter Thiel, so the investor effect is a bit mitigated I think.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  >"They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be demanding bold moves." Like a business plan? Who knew that they'd be actually expected to offer a return on that money at some point? I'd love to know where that money is going/has gone. Edit: Oh. http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-View http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mo...
  - AznHisoka 14y ago
    4 times their current size of 40 employees? This is Digg 2.0 all over time. The obvious question: Why the HECK do they need 40, let alone 160 employees?!
    - ehsanu1 14y ago
      Space for 160 employees doesn't mean they'll have 160.. They just have room to grow a bit. 40 is a lot of employees, but with their funding they can afford it, and it may just be essential, we can't really know from the outside looking in.
- notJim 14y ago
  I think Quora would have been great as a “lifestyle business” [insert appropriate sneering as necessary.] Put ads on it for logged-out users, have good SEO and high-quality Q & A, and it'll make a living for a small number of people to keep the site up. This is how Ask Metafilter[1] works, and it is among the best Q & A sites. Metafilter (which includes metafilter.com proper) seems to provide a comfortable living for about 4-ish people (I'm guessing a bit here, I think you could find more info if you looked.) The problem comes when the company gets funding, and suddenly it's not good enough to become a high-quality, community-driven Q & A site. Suddenly you need to generate some kind of huge exit for your VC owners, and then their recent action start to make sense. [1]: http://ask.metafilter.com http://ask.metafilter.com
ozataman 14y ago
Wow, this is a really big lapse of judgement on Quora's part. I'm contemplating if I should delete my account altogether. In any case, thank you for posting it here - at least people can take the precautions. Edit: That yes/no button is not at all obvious! They need some form of green/red color coding.
- vijayr 14y ago
  You'll have to send an email to privacy@quora.com to delete your account. I did, and they deleted my account. I also told them politely that broadcasting what every user reads to the entire world is very creepy. It is a shame, as the quality of answers at quora is much higher than in other places.
  - btipling 14y ago
    I emailed them a long time ago and they still haven't deleted my account.
  - samstave 14y ago
    See my earlier posts about this. I deleted my account and asked for confirmation this was done, they stated it was - but all my info, comments, edits etc are all still there just simply no longer under my name!!
    - sdqali 14y ago
      I have had the same experience. I got a mail from them saying they deleted my account, but the questions I posted are still there.
      - vijayr 14y ago
        Just checked, you are right, my questions are still there. Their email said (exact words) you should find yourself completely removed from the site So in effect, our "info" is removed, but not our discussions/answers/questions? Sorry, I should've checked before posting my above comment. It didn't even occur to me, that they might simply "de-link" my name, but keep the data as is.
engtech 14y ago
Why don't they show something like "4 of your friends" read this answer without identifying the friend? They would need a lower threshold were you would need a minimum number of friends before this feature would kick in to keep the data anonymous. They could also just say something like "4 people within your network" read this and use the network effect of 2nd and 3rd degree connections. I'm surprised that no adult websites implement a social sharing feature like that. No one is clicking on the facebook / google+ buttons on purpose, but it might be interesting to see what videos people in your network are watching if it was anonymous.
timmyd 14y ago
Indeed the problem - as with Facebook - is that these settings are constantly "opt-out". This is perhaps as bad as the Beacon program in that as the author correctly originally notes - some personal items might be "viewed" which subsequently detail their actions to other users which they never intended to be public. Classic examples of mistakes in the past are like "How to propose?" or "What's a good engagement ring size?" and so on. All these problems were exposed with Facebook Beacon and purchasing decisions and after much revolt they shut it. I honestly can't understand why Quora would implemented "User X viewed User Y" - I think that's taking the privacy perspective to a whole new level. Indeed, even on Facebook if they started listing things like "User A viewed your profile 55 times today" - it would essentially kill the service in it's tracks as would "User B viewed this photo 33 times" and so on. People have always used Facebook to stalk their friends - but that doesn't mean it should be detailed publicly for all the world to see. This should be "opt-in" if not removed all together in my mind. As part of internal metric tracking - it's obvious that this occurs - but it shouldn't be public or should be entirely opt-in.
- Splines 14y ago
  Even with opt-out, it can make you wonder if Quora is still keeping this data. What stops them from disabling the opt-out portion of the feature and "outing" everybody?
melvinmt 14y ago
Thanks, I posted a link to this post on Quora to my followers and deactivated my account.
heyitsnick 14y ago
I see the author's point, and users should be aware Quora does this and have the facility to disable this but ... is this not an over reaction? Viewing a question titled “Should I come out to my parents?” or “What is the best way to hide an affair?” doesn't in any way imply you are gay or hiding an affair... just that you showed some interesting the question and possible answers. I'd be interesting in both those topics just to see the variety of responses. I don't think i would need to hide the fact that i viewed those threads. If they were providing complete Quora browsing history of a user, which you could see a general trend towards topics a person reads over time, I would see a serious breach of privacy. But a single one off "so and so just read this" is hardly damning.
- m_for_monkey 14y ago
  You are right, people shouldn't jump to conclusions, but, unfortunately, they often do.
  - drharris 14y ago
    +1. In fact our brains are wired/evolved to do so. Debating should vs. should not is ultimately philosophical at best. We should look at things like this from a framework of reality. Reality dictates people (including smart folks like us) will indeed jump to those conclusions and form opinions about others.
- masterzora 14y ago
  Sure, viewing a question with those titles doesn't imply (in the logical sense) that you are gay or hiding an affair but to some it may imply (in the looser English sense) them all the same. More importantly, if you're cis hetero you feel no reason to hide reading a question titled "Should I come out to my parents?" because you don't feel any implicit threat. If you're a 15-year-old gay kid in the deep south with fundamentalist parents who will totally freak out if they learn they have a gay child then that threat is there. Even if you can claim "no, I'm not gay, I was just reading an interesting thread" that doesn't eliminate that threat. Now, in this particular example, that child will almost certainly be 100% decided not to tell their parents and not need to read such a question, but work with me here. It's easy to fill in with scenarios that almost certainly do occur and could be legitimately dangerous in a number of ways. I mean, hell, a physically abusive spouse noticing you reading "How should I deal with my spouse abusing me?" is NOT GOING TO END WELL. Even if you try to explain "No, I just thought it was interesting. Of course I don't think you're abusive." I'll freely admit these cases are sufficiently rare among the general population but they are also cases worth protecting to the point where we're still far from overreacting.
ryandvm 14y ago
Hmmm. I wonder how Myoung Kang feels about this post...
dotmanish 14y ago
I personally agree - I would be annoyed if I discovered this (I haven't logged on to Quora in a long long time). They seem to have most recently updated their Privacy Policy (http://www.quora.com/about/privacy/ http://www.quora.com/about/privacy/) on August 1. Quoting "Specifically, you consent to Quora's disclosure of information related to the ways in which you interact with the Service, such as: landing pages, pages viewed". On the counter-side, I would have been okay if they sent a mass-mailer saying "We have introduced a new feature on Quora - now you know how your peers are doing with Quora!" - making it sound marketing-like, but in reality, percolating the information to their users in the most seemingly-harmless way possible. This could have won them actual fans for this feature.
cpeterso 14y ago
Quora must be doing well. They've outgrown their Palo Alto office and are relocating to Mountain View: http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-View http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mo...
espeed 14y ago
You can disable that in your settings.
- brandoncor 14y ago
  Yes, but the default is on. I didn't know that until I saw this post 5 minutes ago. Now I'm thinking of deactivating my Quora account.
SebMortelmans 14y ago
This is completely crossing the line. Showing others what you have searched without notifying me about this is just offensive to me. I love quora and what they are doing, but this is completely below the belt.
robforman 14y ago
With a security background, I'm painfully aware of how very little is private these days. But this is just a disgrace. I deleted my account. I hope others get the message.
incision 14y ago
Smells desperate to me. Quora launched with all kinds of "Former Facebooker!" hype that it hasn't really lived up to. I've had some good reads on the site, but only from the cream of the crop threads that make it into the digest emails. Searching out a general question on Quora seems more likely to lead directly to hordes of marketers linking back to their own sites.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I just can't tolerate a site where people upvote you based on where you work and not based on the content of your answer. A recent thread on using "bullets" to separate text elements on a single line wherein a Facebook employee responded by saying "I stole it from Flickr" had more upvotes by far when it was put in the newsletter than a post below it highlighting (with images and historical references) that we've been using dots-as-spaces since we were writing on stone tablets really drove this home for me.
  - incision 14y ago
    That's exactly the kind of thing I feared upon hearing of Quora's focus on real names back when they launched. I expect the bubbling up of such things (stuff that is somehow "interesting", but not useful) is a problem for the majority of social sites. I tend to think the like button / upvote concept is just busted and largely to blame, but I certainly don't know how to solve or supplant it.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  "Quora launched with all kinds of "Former Facebooker!" hype that it hasn't really lived up to." With all of these privacy issues popping up with them the past couple of weeks I'd venture to say their "Former Facebooker!" hype is being lived up to quite well.
alanh 14y ago
I sent feedback@quora.com a message to let them know I am very upset with this gross violation of privacy and Web norms. I encourage you all to do the same. (Or call them, if you know someone.)
rmc 14y ago
This is why you need Data Protection law (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive )
- cheald 14y ago
  Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users, as long as I'm free to not be a user (and I no longer am). Quora is committing good-will suicide with this move, and them's the breaks, but a legal requirement preventing it is overkill.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users" Sounds like you have a high tolerance for living with cockroaches if you can just move from one apartment to another instead of rooting out the infestation.
jongold 14y ago
I think this is the Quoraish way to answer the question - meta enough? http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about-Quoras-new-privacy-issues http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about-Quora...
electic 14y ago
I honestly think having accounts on social networks is now becoming a huge liability. They start of as quite private and then morph into being open and you are left holding the bag. It just means the more networks you sign up for the more networks you have to main and the more networks you have to cancel later. This is quite upsetting.
ajju 14y ago
Sigh, another day, another useful service decides to overshare on my behalf. FYI, to turn off this setting, go to Views -> Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed
ivankirigin 14y ago
This is my post. I didn't expect this on HN, but I shouldn't be too surprised I guess. I just want to stress that I really do love using Quora. It has some of the most unique content on the internet. It is because of this that I even care about my activity syndication there.
- mkolodny 14y ago
  I upvoted your post for the same reason that you posted it - in hopes that Quora will decide not to kill privacy on the site. Now I kind of wish I hadn't since the sentiment on this thread is so anti-Quora. I love Quora, too. The amount of knowledge you gain from even a few minutes there is truly incredible. If HN'ers could get over the fact that Quora is a social site started by Facebookers, I truly believe they would love it too. Quora (and the world) would benefit from more answers from the HN community.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    I don't have much to add other than "yeah, that", and the fact that the breathless cry of "zOMG PRIVACY!" and the sanctimonious hand wringing about "Well what about people who don't want (some dangerous person) to know what they're doing" is starting to get irritatingly old. There are a few people for various reasons who should stay the hell away from social media in all its forms. Okay, granted. For me, I don't see the point of privacy for privacy's sake. Oh no! An advertiser might know what I like! Oh no! The government might know what I like! Oh no! An ex might know what I like! And I care.... why? Put another way, I can become some sort of privacy super-advocate which means hamstringing myself socially and professionally, making my online life more difficult in just about every fashion, (No social networking, no hosted anything.. have fun with that!), or I can pick my battles and realize that I'm not a spy and more likely than not have no reason to worry about targeted ads. Rant off - I've needed to unpack this for a while. Quora is a great resource, and I'm sick and tired of seeing people slag on it for a feature they can turn off. And I'd like to respectfully ask that any downvoters at least bother to explain themselves before clicking. I realize this is probably a highly controversial stance, but the least you could do is contribute to the discussion.
ereckers 14y ago
There is nothing certain in life but death, taxes, and monetization. It's Quora's time to start making money. It's reaching the social site late stage end of life phase. The internet's natural order.
justinph 14y ago
Here is the thread screenshotted in the blog post, in case any one was interested: http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-most-people-saved-by-the-time-they-are-30-years-old http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-mo...
lifeinafolder 14y ago
FYI, you cannot delete your Quora account from there website. For that, you need to email: privacy@quora.com
- brandoncor 14y ago
  I don't believe that's true. I see a "Deactivate" button in my settings. Or is that not the same thing as "deleting"?
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    No. You have to send a mail to privacy@quora.com and they might take mercy on your asocial soul and delete your account for good (no guarantees though).
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    No, it's true. http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-... I don't know what "deactivating" does, but the account is reactivated if you log in. I tried it and it didn't appear to do anything except log me out. I also sent an email to privacy@quora.com to have the account deleted, but it hasn't happened yet...
gojomo 14y ago
Quora clearly announced this change of policy. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard". http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/beware-of-leopard-douglas-adams-quote.html http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/bewar...
fairramone 14y ago
Quora's new walled garden reminds me of expertsexchange.com. And that's not a good thing.
rjsamson 14y ago
This is exactly why I now stay logged out of Quora and use Spectacles (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhiomnnaabojgibch https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhi...) if I need to browse over to Quora.
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cs702 14y ago
It seems that almost every week I read about yet another "social" company breaching longstanding societal norms regarding privacy. Quora is just the latest example. What happens next has become rather predictable: a few voices criticize the company in question, the company (maybe) issues some kind of public apology, and then... nothing seems to change. Maybe our society doesn't really care that much about privacy.
joe_bloggs 14y ago
Equally f'd up is the fact that you cannot delete your Quora account. Seriously. Try searching for any such option in your settings page. They only have a "deactivate" option, and once you deactivate, you can reactivate anytime by just logging in again :) Found this quora post: http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-... According to a Quora engineer, it seems you can delete your account by emailing privacy@quora.com Wow! This certainly sounds like something EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) should try and do something about.
cletus 14y ago
I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley seemed to think it is (eg [1]). Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. These kinds of moves: - requiring login to view content; - partially obscuring content on Google results to maximize sign-ins; and - showing what you view to other people. come across to me as a company coming off hype and approaching a crunch point. I believe now, more than ever, than Quora will end up an acquisition for Google or Facebook or will simply slide into irrelevance. [1]: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-quora-why-benchmark-was-right-to-pay-up/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-q...
- koglerjs 14y ago
  >Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. well said. fuck Quora, as the OP suggested. The best place to ask questions from the article like "What is the best way to hide an affair"--as if Quora could ever manage an honest discussion like that--is reddit. Of course, you couldn't ask the question just like that. It'd have to be more genuine, a post on /r/AskReddit like: "People who have had affairs: How did they happen?" Reddit has the kind of simultaneous anonymity and validity to look at things in [1] a very accurate way. [1]: http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist
  - ceol 14y ago
    That rapist thread in /r/AskReddit was, next to the time a poor girl was harassed due to a user thinking she faked her assault story, the worst thing I've ever seen on reddit. The direct responses were exactly what the OP had asked, but the comment replies by users were flooded with rape apology and victim blaming. In one instance, a rapist had to tell people to stop apologizing for him because he knew he was an actual rapist. I would never, ever point someone to reddit as a place to have an honest discussion. You might as well make a thread on 4chan and only ask for the worst possible answers.
ivankirigin 14y ago
This is apparently a new feature, just launched a 2 weeks ago: http://www.quora.com/blog/Introducing-Views-on-Quora http://www.quora.com/blog/Introducing-Views-on-Quora
ctdonath 14y ago
Anyone remember Belkin's fiasco of selling a router which would randomly replace webpage requests with ads for their products? Some do, and still won't buy Belkin anything due to trust destroyed. Same here: Quora may survive this, but many users will never go there for permanent lack of trust.
guelo 14y ago
This isn't much different from what Facebook does showing friends all your likes and comments, except Facebook doesn't let you turn it off.
- roc 14y ago
  There's a huge difference between sharing what people have explicitly interacted with (making a comment, clicking "like") and sharing what people have passively viewed with no explicit action on their part.
  - guelo 14y ago
    With Facebook's f'ed up app ecosystem I've seen friends Like some pretty embarrassing stuff without realizing they had done so. And besides, the change has been recent, there has been a training period as people realized their Likes and comments were shared. I can't imagine how many millions of awkward embarrassing conversations have happened because these vampire companies don't care about their user's privacy.
wpietri 14y ago
The forced login stuff really enraged me. This is the rant I posted to Quora on the topic in hopes of getting them to change their minds: For a long time I've been meaning to write personal stuff about my mom's death last year from a brain tumor. The question "Death and Dying: What does it feels like when doctor says you'll just live X days / months?" popped up in my feed. So I answered it. In detail. Crying as I went. At some point I realized I was hyperventilating from the sobs, but I knew if I stopped I wouldn't finish. So I wrote and wrote and clicked "Add Answer". Since I was sharing it with the world, I decided to man up and share it with my loved ones. I copied the link and posted it to Facebook, so that my friends and family could read it. Like you'd do with any other link in the world. And then began the fucking tech support circus. Within an hour, somebody said: I'd like to read this but I'm unable to without giving them my FB login info. Am I missing something? I immediately checked, and I wasn't bothered when I clicked through, even when signed out of Quora. No idea what was going on. I thought it might be some referrer sniffing plus cookies; I suggested they copy-paste the link. Another friend made other suggestions. But that didn't solve it for everybody; another person just now commented: I wanted to read, but I got this thing saying I need to approve an app called Quora - an app which "may post on my behalf" - which seems like a rather large presumption for an app to take. Or am I misunderstanding something which is actually quite benign? Sorry to interject a facebook question into this thread, but I do want to read what you wrote.... And they're right. It's a fucking giant presumption to ask for that just so my friends can read something I wrote and wanted to share with them. So I just gave up and copy-pasted the text into the little Facebook comment box, arguing meanwhile with Facebook about what the goddamn enter key means. (It means new line, motherfuckers.) The end result: what I was hoping would be a solemn remembrance of my dead mom is now cluttered up with people trying to defend themselves against Quora's quest for better user numbers at their next fucking board meeting. So thanks, Quora, for strip-mining my personal tragedy to up your AARRR metrics. I hope it was worth it, because you've lost a lot of my trust. Edited to add links: The rant on Quora: http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Facebook-signup-on-inbound-links-from-Facebook http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Faceboo... And the answer I wrote: http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-like-when-doctor-says-youll-just-live-X-days-months/answer/William-Pietri http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-li...
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dm8 14y ago
Question is, will it turn out to be "News Feed" feature of FB or FB Beacon? Their founding team were present when FB introduced News Feed and Beacon. I'm sure they've given lot of thought to it. Common sense dictates, it is screwed up move. I had the same thought when I saw news feed feature. But it turned out to be pretty rad and successful. Not sure what Quora team are envisioning here.
cheald 14y ago
And just like that, I no longer have a Quora account. This is a "dark pattern", and it's sleazy any way you slice it. They could have easily fixed it by popping up a dialog when I first sign in that says "Hey, do you want to share the things you read in your feed? Yes/No", and I could select "No" and be on my merry way. Instead, they decided that they would make a decision about my privacy for me, and they've lost me as a user in the process.
sidcool 14y ago
This looks like a big gaffe by Quora.
confluence 14y ago
I understand people's outrage at this invasion of privacy - but honestly why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already been tracked and recorded (not being paranoid or anything - just being realistic). There is a lot of value in figuring out who someone is, what they like and don't like and what they are likely to buy (ad networks/trackers etc.). Hence you MUST assume that everything you have done, and ever will do, is, for all intents and purposes, PUBLIC FOREVERMORE. Not "whisper public" but shared across YouTube public with 100 MILLION PEOPLE. Once you assume that situation you attempt to mitigate possible pitfalls and these things don't bother you so much (they still will - but the sting isn't nearly as strong). And no - the web isn't going in the opposite direction - privacy is dead - long live privacy! You can try and shame or regulate it away - but seeing the web as it is today and where it's going - there is no turning back.
- lazugod 14y ago
  > why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already been tracked and recorded Because their friends, family, and coworkers don't get to see those records, and it is difficult (important, but difficult) to care about the unseen omnisciency of Google/Facebook data junkies.
- pbreit 14y ago
  I can't think of any other situations where merely viewing a page is made public.
teflonhook 14y ago
It's a great new innovation from Silicon Valley.. "frictionless stalking"
stfu 14y ago
So far I counted 10 fuck/ings and one nazi calling in this discussion. Please guys, I come here for a civil discussion and not some ragefest.
- onedev 14y ago
  stfu
- malloreon 14y ago
  your username is stfu.
  - Intermernet 14y ago
    I think he's interested in organizing tenant farmers in the southern USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Tenant_Farmers_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Tenant_Farmers_Union
damian2000 14y ago
I just got my quora account demoted to read-only for not using a real name .. wtf Requiring login to view is their biggest problem. Requiring real names is their second problem. This is just making things worse.
codezero 14y ago
The views feature isn't enabled until you read the announcement which is forced into the view on top of the page when you view the web site, you have to specifically click Hide to remove it and acknowledge the new option. If you turn it off, it will retroactively remove any of your views, you can turn it off here http://www.quora.com/settings http://www.quora.com/settings
pbreit 14y ago
I am very surprised that there is so much support for this feature. I can't think of any other situation where such a passive action is made public.
kbronson 14y ago
Is this thing that interesting? Quota screwed again, end of story. Go from my main page and leave space for more hacky news. 629 points? this is starting to get crazy.
bambax 14y ago
This is why you need to login to Quora (et al.) under a pseudonym. (It's against the TOS but 1/who cares? and 2/how are they supposed to find out?)
ngsayjoe 14y ago
Yahoo does the same thing ... and i immediately uninstall it upon such discovery!
valdiorn 14y ago
And that's why you don't use Quora
chefsurfing 14y ago
It seems to me there is only one good response to this type of corporate behavior: remove yourself from the equation. ou are free to quit and have them remove your data from the system. I did this last week and I feel much better now. To Quora's credit it only took 24 hours to be removed from the system. If you consider it abuse, staying in an abusive relationship is just plain stupid :)
lucian303 14y ago
You don't pay for it, thus you're the product, not the consumer. The product doesn't get what it wants. Not how things work.
mcgwiz 14y ago
What's all the hullaballoo about?! LinkedIn does the same thing: you can see who viewed your profile if you enable your own views of other profiles to be seen by their owners. Or do we only get riled up when the perp is a small startup that still holds the promise of cracking the holy grail of sustainability without charging a usage fee? ...Damn sell-outs, it's like all they care about is finding a way to make money.

827 points by webwright 14y ago

89a 14y ago

never understood why people bothered with this garbage Expert Sexchange 2.0

Also, you can't view some answers anonymously anymore (blurred out a la expertsexchange.com). Seems they are desperate for new users...

mcphilip 14y ago
I really hope this blows back hard on Quora. We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. Google and Facebook can mostly get away with similar violations since the large majority of users simply don't care and/or don't understand the privacy concerns, but maybe it's not too late to lash back at relatively insignificant companies like Quora for blatant disregard of privacy...
- spinchange 14y ago
  >We need dramatic examples of companies' valuations being hit for making such privacy violations on a whim. They don't exist. Only a small subset of users even care and investors and stakeholders just want their site to succeed any way it can. While not expressly privacy-related, take a look at charts of LinkedIn stock after their massive security breach where it was revealed they weren't salting password hashes. Not only did it not dip, it rose on the news and held those gains until after the story was out of the news.

omegaworks 14y ago

The blowback from stupid share-everything policies is what will eventually collapse this social media bubble. I disabled Spotify-to-Facebook sharing completely, even though I wouldn't mind if the controls were more granular and the notifications were less obtrusive. Right now people put a lot of faith and trust in their social media providers, and the more said services violate that trust, the less users will share by default and the less valuable the services will be as a result.

blhack 14y ago

The new "social" web is really creepy. Browsing in an incognito browser and logged into nothing has sortof become my default. I don't want google chrome saving my search history, or to accidentally read an article on some news website that then broadcasts that fact to all of my facebook friends.

vladd 14y ago
You can no longer browse Quora while being logged out: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332978 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332978
- _delirium 14y ago
  I'm still confused how that gets by Google. The full text shows up in search results, but is blurred by CSS for humans. Isn't that not allowed? Even experts-exchange includes the readable plaintext answers way at the bottom if you scroll down, for that reason. edit: removed discussion of googleoff/googleon directives in the HTML source. Seemed suspicious, but apparently it's something to do with Google Search Appliance.
  - relix 14y ago
    That's insane, that's a bannable offense in Google. How do they still show up in search results?
    - lucisferre 14y ago
      It's a pretty recent change, give it time.
      - dasil003 14y ago
        Yeah Google better kick them to the curb on this one. Man, for all the quibbling over Google latest activity being evil or not, they still do a much better job with basic ethics than Facebook and their ilk. The non-stop attempt to actively change privacy norms by constantly defaulting existing users into more and more revealing new preferences is starting to get really irritating. Facebook I sort of have to put up with because of friends and family, but Quora I'm done with until they reverse this braindead decision. Seriously I don't know who they think they are.

diego 14y ago

I get the impression that Quora is in a tough spot because of the perceived implosion of the "social bubble" after the FB IPO. They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be demanding bold moves. I don't personally know anyone who works there, so it's pure speculation. [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora

hkmurakami 14y ago
The latest round was funded nearly entirely by Adam D'Angelo and Peter Thiel, so the investor effect is a bit mitigated I think.
tatsuke95 14y ago
>"They have $61M in funding [1], which means that their investors must be demanding bold moves." Like a business plan? Who knew that they'd be actually expected to offer a return on that money at some point? I'd love to know where that money is going/has gone. Edit: Oh. http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-View http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mo...
- AznHisoka 14y ago
  4 times their current size of 40 employees? This is Digg 2.0 all over time. The obvious question: Why the HECK do they need 40, let alone 160 employees?!
  - ehsanu1 14y ago
    Space for 160 employees doesn't mean they'll have 160.. They just have room to grow a bit. 40 is a lot of employees, but with their funding they can afford it, and it may just be essential, we can't really know from the outside looking in.
notJim 14y ago
I think Quora would have been great as a “lifestyle business” [insert appropriate sneering as necessary.] Put ads on it for logged-out users, have good SEO and high-quality Q & A, and it'll make a living for a small number of people to keep the site up. This is how Ask Metafilter[1] works, and it is among the best Q & A sites. Metafilter (which includes metafilter.com proper) seems to provide a comfortable living for about 4-ish people (I'm guessing a bit here, I think you could find more info if you looked.) The problem comes when the company gets funding, and suddenly it's not good enough to become a high-quality, community-driven Q & A site. Suddenly you need to generate some kind of huge exit for your VC owners, and then their recent action start to make sense. [1]: http://ask.metafilter.com http://ask.metafilter.com

ozataman 14y ago

Wow, this is a really big lapse of judgement on Quora's part. I'm contemplating if I should delete my account altogether. In any case, thank you for posting it here - at least people can take the precautions. Edit: That yes/no button is not at all obvious! They need some form of green/red color coding.

vijayr 14y ago
You'll have to send an email to privacy@quora.com to delete your account. I did, and they deleted my account. I also told them politely that broadcasting what every user reads to the entire world is very creepy. It is a shame, as the quality of answers at quora is much higher than in other places.
- btipling 14y ago
  I emailed them a long time ago and they still haven't deleted my account.
- samstave 14y ago
  See my earlier posts about this. I deleted my account and asked for confirmation this was done, they stated it was - but all my info, comments, edits etc are all still there just simply no longer under my name!!
  - sdqali 14y ago
    I have had the same experience. I got a mail from them saying they deleted my account, but the questions I posted are still there.
    - vijayr 14y ago
      Just checked, you are right, my questions are still there. Their email said (exact words) you should find yourself completely removed from the site So in effect, our "info" is removed, but not our discussions/answers/questions? Sorry, I should've checked before posting my above comment. It didn't even occur to me, that they might simply "de-link" my name, but keep the data as is.

engtech 14y ago

Why don't they show something like "4 of your friends" read this answer without identifying the friend? They would need a lower threshold were you would need a minimum number of friends before this feature would kick in to keep the data anonymous. They could also just say something like "4 people within your network" read this and use the network effect of 2nd and 3rd degree connections. I'm surprised that no adult websites implement a social sharing feature like that. No one is clicking on the facebook / google+ buttons on purpose, but it might be interesting to see what videos people in your network are watching if it was anonymous.

timmyd 14y ago

Indeed the problem - as with Facebook - is that these settings are constantly "opt-out". This is perhaps as bad as the Beacon program in that as the author correctly originally notes - some personal items might be "viewed" which subsequently detail their actions to other users which they never intended to be public. Classic examples of mistakes in the past are like "How to propose?" or "What's a good engagement ring size?" and so on. All these problems were exposed with Facebook Beacon and purchasing decisions and after much revolt they shut it. I honestly can't understand why Quora would implemented "User X viewed User Y" - I think that's taking the privacy perspective to a whole new level. Indeed, even on Facebook if they started listing things like "User A viewed your profile 55 times today" - it would essentially kill the service in it's tracks as would "User B viewed this photo 33 times" and so on. People have always used Facebook to stalk their friends - but that doesn't mean it should be detailed publicly for all the world to see. This should be "opt-in" if not removed all together in my mind. As part of internal metric tracking - it's obvious that this occurs - but it shouldn't be public or should be entirely opt-in.

Splines 14y ago
Even with opt-out, it can make you wonder if Quora is still keeping this data. What stops them from disabling the opt-out portion of the feature and "outing" everybody?

melvinmt 14y ago

Thanks, I posted a link to this post on Quora to my followers and deactivated my account.

heyitsnick 14y ago

I see the author's point, and users should be aware Quora does this and have the facility to disable this but ... is this not an over reaction? Viewing a question titled “Should I come out to my parents?” or “What is the best way to hide an affair?” doesn't in any way imply you are gay or hiding an affair... just that you showed some interesting the question and possible answers. I'd be interesting in both those topics just to see the variety of responses. I don't think i would need to hide the fact that i viewed those threads. If they were providing complete Quora browsing history of a user, which you could see a general trend towards topics a person reads over time, I would see a serious breach of privacy. But a single one off "so and so just read this" is hardly damning.

m_for_monkey 14y ago
You are right, people shouldn't jump to conclusions, but, unfortunately, they often do.
- drharris 14y ago
  +1. In fact our brains are wired/evolved to do so. Debating should vs. should not is ultimately philosophical at best. We should look at things like this from a framework of reality. Reality dictates people (including smart folks like us) will indeed jump to those conclusions and form opinions about others.
masterzora 14y ago
Sure, viewing a question with those titles doesn't imply (in the logical sense) that you are gay or hiding an affair but to some it may imply (in the looser English sense) them all the same. More importantly, if you're cis hetero you feel no reason to hide reading a question titled "Should I come out to my parents?" because you don't feel any implicit threat. If you're a 15-year-old gay kid in the deep south with fundamentalist parents who will totally freak out if they learn they have a gay child then that threat is there. Even if you can claim "no, I'm not gay, I was just reading an interesting thread" that doesn't eliminate that threat. Now, in this particular example, that child will almost certainly be 100% decided not to tell their parents and not need to read such a question, but work with me here. It's easy to fill in with scenarios that almost certainly do occur and could be legitimately dangerous in a number of ways. I mean, hell, a physically abusive spouse noticing you reading "How should I deal with my spouse abusing me?" is NOT GOING TO END WELL. Even if you try to explain "No, I just thought it was interesting. Of course I don't think you're abusive." I'll freely admit these cases are sufficiently rare among the general population but they are also cases worth protecting to the point where we're still far from overreacting.

ryandvm 14y ago

Hmmm. I wonder how Myoung Kang feels about this post...

dotmanish 14y ago

I personally agree - I would be annoyed if I discovered this (I haven't logged on to Quora in a long long time). They seem to have most recently updated their Privacy Policy (http://www.quora.com/about/privacy/ http://www.quora.com/about/privacy/) on August 1. Quoting "Specifically, you consent to Quora's disclosure of information related to the ways in which you interact with the Service, such as: landing pages, pages viewed". On the counter-side, I would have been okay if they sent a mass-mailer saying "We have introduced a new feature on Quora - now you know how your peers are doing with Quora!" - making it sound marketing-like, but in reality, percolating the information to their users in the most seemingly-harmless way possible. This could have won them actual fans for this feature.

cpeterso 14y ago

Quora must be doing well. They've outgrown their Palo Alto office and are relocating to Mountain View: http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-View http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mo...

espeed 14y ago

You can disable that in your settings.

brandoncor 14y ago
Yes, but the default is on. I didn't know that until I saw this post 5 minutes ago. Now I'm thinking of deactivating my Quora account.

SebMortelmans 14y ago

This is completely crossing the line. Showing others what you have searched without notifying me about this is just offensive to me. I love quora and what they are doing, but this is completely below the belt.

robforman 14y ago

With a security background, I'm painfully aware of how very little is private these days. But this is just a disgrace. I deleted my account. I hope others get the message.

incision 14y ago

Smells desperate to me. Quora launched with all kinds of "Former Facebooker!" hype that it hasn't really lived up to. I've had some good reads on the site, but only from the cream of the crop threads that make it into the digest emails. Searching out a general question on Quora seems more likely to lead directly to hordes of marketers linking back to their own sites.

mnicole 14y ago
I just can't tolerate a site where people upvote you based on where you work and not based on the content of your answer. A recent thread on using "bullets" to separate text elements on a single line wherein a Facebook employee responded by saying "I stole it from Flickr" had more upvotes by far when it was put in the newsletter than a post below it highlighting (with images and historical references) that we've been using dots-as-spaces since we were writing on stone tablets really drove this home for me.
- incision 14y ago
  That's exactly the kind of thing I feared upon hearing of Quora's focus on real names back when they launched. I expect the bubbling up of such things (stuff that is somehow "interesting", but not useful) is a problem for the majority of social sites. I tend to think the like button / upvote concept is just busted and largely to blame, but I certainly don't know how to solve or supplant it.
georgemcbay 14y ago
"Quora launched with all kinds of "Former Facebooker!" hype that it hasn't really lived up to." With all of these privacy issues popping up with them the past couple of weeks I'd venture to say their "Former Facebooker!" hype is being lived up to quite well.

alanh 14y ago

I sent feedback@quora.com a message to let them know I am very upset with this gross violation of privacy and Web norms. I encourage you all to do the same. (Or call them, if you know someone.)

rmc 14y ago

This is why you need Data Protection law (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive )

cheald 14y ago
Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users, as long as I'm free to not be a user (and I no longer am). Quora is committing good-will suicide with this move, and them's the breaks, but a legal requirement preventing it is overkill.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users" Sounds like you have a high tolerance for living with cockroaches if you can just move from one apartment to another instead of rooting out the infestation.

jongold 14y ago

I think this is the Quoraish way to answer the question - meta enough? http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about-Quoras-new-privacy-issues http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-do-Quorans-think-about-Quora...

electic 14y ago

I honestly think having accounts on social networks is now becoming a huge liability. They start of as quite private and then morph into being open and you are left holding the bag. It just means the more networks you sign up for the more networks you have to main and the more networks you have to cancel later. This is quite upsetting.

ajju 14y ago

Sigh, another day, another useful service decides to overshare on my behalf. FYI, to turn off this setting, go to Views -> Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed

ivankirigin 14y ago

This is my post. I didn't expect this on HN, but I shouldn't be too surprised I guess. I just want to stress that I really do love using Quora. It has some of the most unique content on the internet. It is because of this that I even care about my activity syndication there.

mkolodny 14y ago
I upvoted your post for the same reason that you posted it - in hopes that Quora will decide not to kill privacy on the site. Now I kind of wish I hadn't since the sentiment on this thread is so anti-Quora. I love Quora, too. The amount of knowledge you gain from even a few minutes there is truly incredible. If HN'ers could get over the fact that Quora is a social site started by Facebookers, I truly believe they would love it too. Quora (and the world) would benefit from more answers from the HN community.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  I don't have much to add other than "yeah, that", and the fact that the breathless cry of "zOMG PRIVACY!" and the sanctimonious hand wringing about "Well what about people who don't want (some dangerous person) to know what they're doing" is starting to get irritatingly old. There are a few people for various reasons who should stay the hell away from social media in all its forms. Okay, granted. For me, I don't see the point of privacy for privacy's sake. Oh no! An advertiser might know what I like! Oh no! The government might know what I like! Oh no! An ex might know what I like! And I care.... why? Put another way, I can become some sort of privacy super-advocate which means hamstringing myself socially and professionally, making my online life more difficult in just about every fashion, (No social networking, no hosted anything.. have fun with that!), or I can pick my battles and realize that I'm not a spy and more likely than not have no reason to worry about targeted ads. Rant off - I've needed to unpack this for a while. Quora is a great resource, and I'm sick and tired of seeing people slag on it for a feature they can turn off. And I'd like to respectfully ask that any downvoters at least bother to explain themselves before clicking. I realize this is probably a highly controversial stance, but the least you could do is contribute to the discussion.

ereckers 14y ago

There is nothing certain in life but death, taxes, and monetization. It's Quora's time to start making money. It's reaching the social site late stage end of life phase. The internet's natural order.

justinph 14y ago

Here is the thread screenshotted in the blog post, in case any one was interested: http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-most-people-saved-by-the-time-they-are-30-years-old http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-mo...

lifeinafolder 14y ago

FYI, you cannot delete your Quora account from there website. For that, you need to email: privacy@quora.com

brandoncor 14y ago
I don't believe that's true. I see a "Deactivate" button in my settings. Or is that not the same thing as "deleting"?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  No. You have to send a mail to privacy@quora.com and they might take mercy on your asocial soul and delete your account for good (no guarantees though).
- jlarocco 14y ago
  No, it's true. http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-... I don't know what "deactivating" does, but the account is reactivated if you log in. I tried it and it didn't appear to do anything except log me out. I also sent an email to privacy@quora.com to have the account deleted, but it hasn't happened yet...

gojomo 14y ago

Quora clearly announced this change of policy. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard". http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/beware-of-leopard-douglas-adams-quote.html http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/bewar...

fairramone 14y ago

Quora's new walled garden reminds me of expertsexchange.com. And that's not a good thing.

rjsamson 14y ago

This is exactly why I now stay logged out of Quora and use Spectacles (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhiomnnaabojgibch https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbckpcgmpkkfdjhmhi...) if I need to browse over to Quora.

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cs702 14y ago

It seems that almost every week I read about yet another "social" company breaching longstanding societal norms regarding privacy. Quora is just the latest example. What happens next has become rather predictable: a few voices criticize the company in question, the company (maybe) issues some kind of public apology, and then... nothing seems to change. Maybe our society doesn't really care that much about privacy.

joe_bloggs 14y ago

Equally f'd up is the fact that you cannot delete your Quora account. Seriously. Try searching for any such option in your settings page. They only have a "deactivate" option, and once you deactivate, you can reactivate anytime by just logging in again :) Found this quora post: http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-... According to a Quora engineer, it seems you can delete your account by emailing privacy@quora.com Wow! This certainly sounds like something EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) should try and do something about.

cletus 14y ago

I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley seemed to think it is (eg [1]). Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. These kinds of moves: - requiring login to view content; - partially obscuring content on Google results to maximize sign-ins; and - showing what you view to other people. come across to me as a company coming off hype and approaching a crunch point. I believe now, more than ever, than Quora will end up an acquisition for Google or Facebook or will simply slide into irrelevance. [1]: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-quora-why-benchmark-was-right-to-pay-up/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-q...

koglerjs 14y ago
>Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. well said. fuck Quora, as the OP suggested. The best place to ask questions from the article like "What is the best way to hide an affair"--as if Quora could ever manage an honest discussion like that--is reddit. Of course, you couldn't ask the question just like that. It'd have to be more genuine, a post on /r/AskReddit like: "People who have had affairs: How did they happen?" Reddit has the kind of simultaneous anonymity and validity to look at things in [1] a very accurate way. [1]: http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist
- ceol 14y ago
  That rapist thread in /r/AskReddit was, next to the time a poor girl was harassed due to a user thinking she faked her assault story, the worst thing I've ever seen on reddit. The direct responses were exactly what the OP had asked, but the comment replies by users were flooded with rape apology and victim blaming. In one instance, a rapist had to tell people to stop apologizing for him because he knew he was an actual rapist. I would never, ever point someone to reddit as a place to have an honest discussion. You might as well make a thread on 4chan and only ask for the worst possible answers.

ivankirigin 14y ago

This is apparently a new feature, just launched a 2 weeks ago: http://www.quora.com/blog/Introducing-Views-on-Quora http://www.quora.com/blog/Introducing-Views-on-Quora

ctdonath 14y ago

Anyone remember Belkin's fiasco of selling a router which would randomly replace webpage requests with ads for their products? Some do, and still won't buy Belkin anything due to trust destroyed. Same here: Quora may survive this, but many users will never go there for permanent lack of trust.

guelo 14y ago

This isn't much different from what Facebook does showing friends all your likes and comments, except Facebook doesn't let you turn it off.

roc 14y ago
There's a huge difference between sharing what people have explicitly interacted with (making a comment, clicking "like") and sharing what people have passively viewed with no explicit action on their part.
- guelo 14y ago
  With Facebook's f'ed up app ecosystem I've seen friends Like some pretty embarrassing stuff without realizing they had done so. And besides, the change has been recent, there has been a training period as people realized their Likes and comments were shared. I can't imagine how many millions of awkward embarrassing conversations have happened because these vampire companies don't care about their user's privacy.

wpietri 14y ago

The forced login stuff really enraged me. This is the rant I posted to Quora on the topic in hopes of getting them to change their minds: For a long time I've been meaning to write personal stuff about my mom's death last year from a brain tumor. The question "Death and Dying: What does it feels like when doctor says you'll just live X days / months?" popped up in my feed. So I answered it. In detail. Crying as I went. At some point I realized I was hyperventilating from the sobs, but I knew if I stopped I wouldn't finish. So I wrote and wrote and clicked "Add Answer". Since I was sharing it with the world, I decided to man up and share it with my loved ones. I copied the link and posted it to Facebook, so that my friends and family could read it. Like you'd do with any other link in the world. And then began the fucking tech support circus. Within an hour, somebody said: I'd like to read this but I'm unable to without giving them my FB login info. Am I missing something? I immediately checked, and I wasn't bothered when I clicked through, even when signed out of Quora. No idea what was going on. I thought it might be some referrer sniffing plus cookies; I suggested they copy-paste the link. Another friend made other suggestions. But that didn't solve it for everybody; another person just now commented: I wanted to read, but I got this thing saying I need to approve an app called Quora - an app which "may post on my behalf" - which seems like a rather large presumption for an app to take. Or am I misunderstanding something which is actually quite benign? Sorry to interject a facebook question into this thread, but I do want to read what you wrote.... And they're right. It's a fucking giant presumption to ask for that just so my friends can read something I wrote and wanted to share with them. So I just gave up and copy-pasted the text into the little Facebook comment box, arguing meanwhile with Facebook about what the goddamn enter key means. (It means new line, motherfuckers.) The end result: what I was hoping would be a solemn remembrance of my dead mom is now cluttered up with people trying to defend themselves against Quora's quest for better user numbers at their next fucking board meeting. So thanks, Quora, for strip-mining my personal tragedy to up your AARRR metrics. I hope it was worth it, because you've lost a lot of my trust. Edited to add links: The rant on Quora: http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Facebook-signup-on-inbound-links-from-Facebook http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Faceboo... And the answer I wrote: http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-like-when-doctor-says-youll-just-live-X-days-months/answer/William-Pietri http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-li...

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dm8 14y ago

Question is, will it turn out to be "News Feed" feature of FB or FB Beacon? Their founding team were present when FB introduced News Feed and Beacon. I'm sure they've given lot of thought to it. Common sense dictates, it is screwed up move. I had the same thought when I saw news feed feature. But it turned out to be pretty rad and successful. Not sure what Quora team are envisioning here.

cheald 14y ago

And just like that, I no longer have a Quora account. This is a "dark pattern", and it's sleazy any way you slice it. They could have easily fixed it by popping up a dialog when I first sign in that says "Hey, do you want to share the things you read in your feed? Yes/No", and I could select "No" and be on my merry way. Instead, they decided that they would make a decision about my privacy for me, and they've lost me as a user in the process.

sidcool 14y ago

This looks like a big gaffe by Quora.

confluence 14y ago

I understand people's outrage at this invasion of privacy - but honestly why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already been tracked and recorded (not being paranoid or anything - just being realistic). There is a lot of value in figuring out who someone is, what they like and don't like and what they are likely to buy (ad networks/trackers etc.). Hence you MUST assume that everything you have done, and ever will do, is, for all intents and purposes, PUBLIC FOREVERMORE. Not "whisper public" but shared across YouTube public with 100 MILLION PEOPLE. Once you assume that situation you attempt to mitigate possible pitfalls and these things don't bother you so much (they still will - but the sting isn't nearly as strong). And no - the web isn't going in the opposite direction - privacy is dead - long live privacy! You can try and shame or regulate it away - but seeing the web as it is today and where it's going - there is no turning back.

lazugod 14y ago
> why do people think that anything they have ever done online hasn't already been tracked and recorded Because their friends, family, and coworkers don't get to see those records, and it is difficult (important, but difficult) to care about the unseen omnisciency of Google/Facebook data junkies.
pbreit 14y ago
I can't think of any other situations where merely viewing a page is made public.

teflonhook 14y ago

It's a great new innovation from Silicon Valley.. "frictionless stalking"

stfu 14y ago

So far I counted 10 fuck/ings and one nazi calling in this discussion. Please guys, I come here for a civil discussion and not some ragefest.

onedev 14y ago
stfu
malloreon 14y ago
your username is stfu.
- Intermernet 14y ago
  I think he's interested in organizing tenant farmers in the southern USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Tenant_Farmers_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Tenant_Farmers_Union

damian2000 14y ago

I just got my quora account demoted to read-only for not using a real name .. wtf Requiring login to view is their biggest problem. Requiring real names is their second problem. This is just making things worse.

codezero 14y ago

The views feature isn't enabled until you read the announcement which is forced into the view on top of the page when you view the web site, you have to specifically click Hide to remove it and acknowledge the new option. If you turn it off, it will retroactively remove any of your views, you can turn it off here http://www.quora.com/settings http://www.quora.com/settings

pbreit 14y ago

I am very surprised that there is so much support for this feature. I can't think of any other situation where such a passive action is made public.

kbronson 14y ago

Is this thing that interesting? Quota screwed again, end of story. Go from my main page and leave space for more hacky news. 629 points? this is starting to get crazy.

bambax 14y ago

This is why you need to login to Quora (et al.) under a pseudonym. (It's against the TOS but 1/who cares? and 2/how are they supposed to find out?)

ngsayjoe 14y ago

Yahoo does the same thing ... and i immediately uninstall it upon such discovery!

valdiorn 14y ago

And that's why you don't use Quora

chefsurfing 14y ago

It seems to me there is only one good response to this type of corporate behavior: remove yourself from the equation. ou are free to quit and have them remove your data from the system. I did this last week and I feel much better now. To Quora's credit it only took 24 hours to be removed from the system. If you consider it abuse, staying in an abusive relationship is just plain stupid :)

lucian303 14y ago

You don't pay for it, thus you're the product, not the consumer. The product doesn't get what it wants. Not how things work.

mcgwiz 14y ago

What's all the hullaballoo about?! LinkedIn does the same thing: you can see who viewed your profile if you enable your own views of other profiles to be seen by their owners. Or do we only get riled up when the perp is a small startup that still holds the promise of cracking the holy grail of sustainability without charging a usage fee? ...Damn sell-outs, it's like all they care about is finding a way to make money.