
Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously - ColinWright
http://gigaom.com/2012/08/01/thanks-to-quora-now-you-cant-read-anonymously/#HB2
======
samstave
Quora is in the same boat as FB (and to a certain extent, Twitter)

They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything
short of revolutionary.

A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and
no connection to digital history. I will delete me Quora account. So far I
have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me.

Deactivated!

Edit:

I followed up with an email to FEEDBACK@QUORA.COM asking them to delete my
account and data.. will see what happens. I dont like the idea of a limbo
account that can be reactivated/mined.

I'd prefer to have it deleted.

~~~
tijs
apparently you have to e-mail privacy@quora.com to get your account deleted
completely. That in itself is reason to delete your account btw. It speaks
volumes of their regard for users and their privacy.

~~~
Auguste
First I'm manually deleting all of my answers, then I'll ask Quora to delete
the rest. I've had bad experience with deleting accounts in the past, where my
content would remain on the website even though my account was gone. And not
having an account, there's nothing I can do about that data afterwards. I want
to be pretty sure that all my Quora content is gone.

Fun fact: There's no way to get a list of your anonymous answers on Quora.
They don't show up on your profile at all. All you can really do is browse
through your list of followed questions and manually check each one to see if
you responded anonymously.

------
0x0
Quora has gone the way of expert-sexchange, showing up in Google search
results for interesting questions, but then overlaying/replacing most answers
with blur and "sign up to read".

Borderline SERP cloaking, to say the least.

~~~
irahul
> Quora has gone the way of expert-sexchange, showing up in Google search
> results for interesting questions, but then overlaying/replacing most
> answers with blur and "sign up to read".

This shit doesn't fly with Google. Delivering different content to Google bot
and the user coming through search makes Google looks like a fool, since the
user is unable to find the content he searched for. That is why expert-
sexchange shows answers at the bottom when Google is your referrer.

If Quora is pulling up this shit, Google will penalize it. I think it's more
likely Quora is simply hiding content behind css.

~~~
0x0
It looks like what they are doing are obfuscating with CSS.

See for example: [http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-
algo...](http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algorithms-
work-for-the-identification-of-spam)

The answers are in a span with class "blurred_answer", which has css styles:
"color: transparent; text-shadow: 0 0 7px #777". Which in effect makes the
text completely unreadable to humans.

This is just one step above "color: #fff; background-color: #fff".

Scummy.

~~~
cantrevealname
I don't see missing or blurred text in your example,

[http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-
algo...](http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algorithms-
work-for-the-identification-of-spam)

I checked with two different browsers (Opera and Firefox under Windows).

Could this mean that the Quora PR machine is up in full swing trying to undo
damage (at least in the case of specific links that people cite)?

~~~
0x0
Did you scroll all the way down? Still blurry here: <http://imgur.com/Bbifs>
(on google chrome)

Although I see in the html source there are some html comments "googleoff".
I've never heard of those before.

I guess "googleon"'ing the first answer is enough to get google juice while
staying within the letter of rules, it's still really spammy.

(Plus, how does that play with other search engines?)

~~~
cantrevealname
Yes, you're right, I can see the blurring in certain cases now.

If I go to the link you cited directly it is not blurred.

But I if search for "How do Bayesian algorithms work" in Google, then click
the link that Google finds, then it _is_ blurred.

Once you get the blurred Quora page, then even going to the link directly will
get you a blurred page. If you delete all the Quora cookies, then it'll be
back to being readable (non-blurred).

Interestingly, if you use Google's encrypted service (
<https://encrypted.google.com/> ) to search for "How do Bayesian algorithms
work", you'll get a non-blurred Quora page.

~~~
eli
IIRC, https sites do not send referer, so that makes sense.

~~~
0x0
https sites sends referers only to other https sites (even crossdomain), but
not when navigating from https to http.

------
chrisacky
If you would like try and get your account deleted, send something like this
to privacy@quora.com

\---------------------

Please can you delete my account.

I'm unhappy with your recent changes that would allow anyone to see the topics
I follow and read.

My registered account is set up at <email address>

Please can you send me confirmation when you have done this. Many Thanks.

\---------------------

I've fired an email off. Re: <http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-
account>

~~~
hk__2
Why didn't you deactivated the feature?

~~~
Auguste
In my opinion, it's not enough. It should not be enabled by default, and it
should not exist at all. Services like Quora should not introduce changes that
compromise the privacy of accounts that already exist. If I hadn't seen this
submission on Hacker News, I wouldn't have known about the change.

~~~
dhimes
Completely agree. Facebook paved the way for this bullshit. If they would
charge $1/month they would beat Facebook's revenue/user rate and could skip
the advertising headaches and the pressure to be slimy.

~~~
ericd
This wouldn't be a good idea for either service, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects>

I doubt that this is related to making money.

~~~
dhimes
Why wouldn't it be a good idea? It works quite well for the industry cited as
the canonical example in the link you gave.

~~~
ericd
A huge number of people would drop off of FB, and would never try quora, if
they charged. Fewer people on each makes each less useful to each potential
new user, and to every existing user, causing more people to drop off.

~~~
dhimes
At some point the pressure is on to _join_ , however, because everybody else
is on it. Like having a cell phone: people expect to be able to reach you, so
you are pressured into having one (even some old buggers who swore they never
would finally succumbed).

So while I agree there would be a loss, I'm not so sure about "huge." Would
people be pissed? Yes. Would there be backlash? Absolutely. Would it open the
door wider for a competitor? Probably. But they would be making honest money,
more than they are now, and could innovate.

I may be wrong about its chances for success, but to me it's not obviously a
failing move.

------
andrewingram
Early last year, when I was starting to get into using Quora, I stopped using
it abruptly when I realised how limited their privacy features are.

Basically, I wanted to contribute quite heavily to the Depression topic. I'm a
sufferer and I wanted to be able to help other people. But on Quora you have a
choice of answering a question either Anonymously or as yourself, the problem
with answering as yourself is that all your activity gets published to the
feed of people who follow you, and with Quora being heavily integrated with
Facebook I wasn't comfortable with this.

Which meant I was forced to answer questions anonymously, which I was equally
uncomfortable with. I felt like I couldn't make an valuable contribution if I
was hiding behind anonymity each time.

I don't mind people knowing things about me, which is why I don't mind saying
this here, using my real name, but that's very different to being willing to
shout from the rooftops.

I emailed Quora to suggest being able to decide what information gets
published to the feed on a per-topic basis. I didn't get a response, which is
hardly surprising, but if basic privacy-controls are outside of their plan for
the site, I can't be part of it.

~~~
bornhuetter
> I felt like I couldn't make an valuable contribution if I was hiding behind
> anonymity each time.

Why is that?

~~~
andrewingram
Because I feel part of being a community member is having a recognisable name,
even if it's just a pseudonym, so just being "Anonymous" isn't sufficient for
me.

Names are important because they allow you to build reputation (ignoring
actual reputation algorithms for now). So if a particular question comes up, a
user might think "I wonder what Joey Joe Joe thinks about this" or "Let's see
what AmazingFace82's answer to this question is".

In the case of any community that's fundamentally about self-improvement, for
example the Depression topic, it's useful to see how an individual's
contributions change over time. Do they become more positive? What solutions
did they try, which ones were most effective?

~~~
bornhuetter
I think anonymous discussion is still valuable, but I agree that it's often
much less valuable when you can't see the individual's comment history.

In my view pseudonymity is usually the best solution - with real names or
complete anonymity only occasionally being preferable.

------
tronronin
Well, I don't think its about the money. Its a desperate move. Heres my theory
on what happened:

Quora was started by an elitist group. They made content policies that were
very elitist (similar to HN in a way) emphasizing quality and trained their
early adopters to vote only the VERY BEST of content.

They then moved away from the gated status and allowed others to enter their
community. The new-comers were however not as qualified to write as the old
user base and obviously most of them never got any upvotes for the content
they created. So the new users got programmed to believe that up votes are
scarce on quora and therefore they themselves stopped up voting on quora.

Well the only problem with this was, up voting also meant sharing. So by
training users to not up vote in a way, they cut off their sharing. So now old
content stopped circulating and that explains why most people think quora is
dead.

To solve the problem of content circulation slowing down, which would heavily
impact the discovery of content, Quora first launched a feature called
'Boards' some time back. (Even though this invited comments on how Quora is
just copying pinterest). That probably got the engine up and running for some
while.

However this still did not fix the problem. I think the most popular board on
Quora has something like 5000 followers. Thats it! So the content is still not
circulating well.

So then they came up with the Views feature - a feature turned on by default
and which would convert every view into a vote and could turn on their content
engine back up again.

What people don't get is - The guy who started eHow is an investor at Quora.
It has always been about long tail content, getting traffic for long queries
on google, content circulation etc...

Quora is not innovative at all, there is no great model there.

Its just eHow done more cleanly.

~~~
lubujackson
Except it's written by users, so it's really Yahoo Answers with real names.

------
kmfrk
I essentially deleted my account a long time ago, which involved unsubscribing
from _every single question_ , and anonymizing _every single comment_ I had
ever made. It was the only thing close to deleting my account, and yet I still
see my content, follows, and upvotes there. Gaining a sense of privacy is an
abstruse and opaque task. And I'm sure that's intended.

One of the things that really bothered me was that I could tell who had made a
thread about a sensitive or taboo-ridden subject[1], although this was not at
all obvious to the person who posted the question. The site creates the
impression that you are - sort of - anonymous when asking a question, but have
to explicitly choose to anonymize, when you post an answer.

To think that this company raised at a $400M valuation in April pisses me off.

The concept of privacy can quickly get very semantic, but I think Steve Jobs
summed it up perfectly:

    
    
        Privacy means people know what they are signing up
        for.
        
        — Steve Jobs, D8 2010.
    

Anyone in their right mind will see that Quora don't give two shits about
privacy - probably because the abolition of it helps their business model.

[1]: In the list of portraits of people following a question, the first of the
portraits is the person who posted the question.

------
fourstar
The greatest thing about Quora is that it doesn't really "exist" outside of
the valley. I stayed in Georgia for 3 months. Everyone in the startup scene
out there (except for my friend who runs a successful website) doesn't know
what Quora is. When I explained it to them, they thought they could get the
same answers from Google.

To an extent, they are correct. I'm getting tired of these self-entitled
startups who think they are running the show.

~~~
marquis
"get the same answers from Google" - well, I signed up for a Quora account out
of curiosity some time ago and started receiving their weekly emails, which
generally I delete or unsubscribe from with most companies but something about
Quora's community has kept me subscribed, for example answers to questions
such as 'What wass it like to grow up insanely rich' and 'What is it like to
lose an Olympic event'. I checked my account and the default is still No for
"Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed" but I'll certainly be
considering deleting my account should this be activated without my consent.

------
ericdykstra
Headline: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously.

Reality: Quora launched a feature called "views", announced to everyone upon
logging in that it was automatically enabled, and is disabled with three
clicks from any page on the site.

I wasn't particularly happy when I was opted in, and immediately turned it
off. Then, after a few hours, I turned it back on and saw that it was actually
a pretty useful feature to see how people were getting to my content. I
noticed that a few of my followers were "connectors" of Quora, through which
half or more of my views on an answer came. This, I feel, is useful and
relevant information.

Yes, being opted into a less private setting is unsettling, but I trust Quora
at least as much as any other company. This is the first time I've been opted
into anything, their settings are incredibly easy to figure out and are
granular, and I trust the people that run the site.

I'll add that this seems to bother non-users more than people who actually use
the site regularly.

~~~
cube13
My reality: Quora links are 100% useless to click.

I don't have an account there. I never intend to have an account there,
because the only thing I've used it for is to get answers(or more context) to
the occasional bizarre coding issue I've run into at work. I've never felt the
need to post anything.

So no, it doesn't matter what new "feature" they added. They have effectively
killed their entire product for me.

~~~
kevinpet
I think your opinion is pretty much worthless then. We're talking about how a
change impacts the value of Quora to users. You didn't like the old version,
don't like the new version, so why comment?

------
aneth4
This is misleading, as you CAN read anonymously if you disable the feature.

Personally, I read stuff for amusement or interest all the time that I would
not want a large portion of my acquaintances knowing that I read, and
certainly not without explanation. For instance, if I read an article about
child abuse and get curious about the age of consent in Massachusetts, I don't
want that showing up to random acquaintances in my feed anywhere.

Enabling this feature surreptitiously and without an opt-in is insanely stupid
and insensitive to users. Given that Quora has very good support for anonymous
questions and answers, you'd expect them to be more savvy than this.

------
chimi
I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but Quora users are the product,
not the customer. Quora wants to make money and they can make more of it by
showing everyone who is looking at what. If they can go to advertisers and
say, "See, we know every single question people are interested in, so you can
get better value out of your clicks! We show this information to everyone, so
we have no problem letting you tailor your placements to exact criteria."

Then they can charge more. It's simple as that.

Quora was a darling. It was started from the inside. We didn't expect this one
did we?

Why oh why do we keep creating content/value for random people we don't know
when we could create a blog on our own website? When we could create a product
that has value to us and others and benefits us in a direct and measurable
way?

Creating that content is work. Answering those questions is work. It takes
time. It takes energy. It takes concentration and value away from work that
benefits YOU.

OMG, I'm doing it right now!

~~~
markkat
It's more than just creating content, it's communication. Quora's end of the
bargain was to maintain a quality platform for the exchange of ideas.

I never got pass the real name policy.

I think a mistake is that these services are either built without a clear
development strategy, or the development strategy doesn't jive with what the
users expect from the early growth phase.

~~~
dhimes
I think the pressure becomes overwhelming when you are playing with other
people's money; that is, when you get investors. There is only one question to
ask: how can we make more money? It's usually phrased differently, but that's
ultimately the question.

We see this repeatedly with "free" products. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool
me twice...

------
SwellJoe
I'd forgotten what Quora was, or that it had existed. Now I'm very glad that's
the case, since I wouldn't want to have to stop using something I actually
liked.

------
pooriaazimi
This is stupid.

What's more stupid is their desperation for you to interact with their site. I
went to remove my unused account, and this is what I got when I typed
www.quora.com:

<http://d.pr/i/WcMl>

You'll notice that I couldn't do anything else - I "had" to choose 5 extremely
broad subjects that I'm supposed to be interested in, in order to be able to
view my profile. I selected 5 subjects randomly, and...

<http://d.pr/i/P7ex>

Only after that they kindly allowed me to view the main page and my profile. I
deactivated my account, and won't ever click on a quota link again (and would
add them to my spam list so they won't show up in my Google results).

~~~
savramescu
If you don't email privacy@quora.com it won't get deleted though. Make sure
you do that as well.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Thanks for pointing that out. Is that a robot on the other end (which deletes
the account if it contains "delete" or so etching like that in the subject
field), or you have to talk to a human and ask them to delete it?

------
flipside
To me, the fact that Quora feels it needs to share passive views means they're
failing to get enough people to actively engage with their content.

If I don't care enough click a button, either A) I have no meaningful opinion,
B) I don't want Quora to know what I think, or C) there's a "problem" with the
button.

Quora, if you're going to just make assumptions about why I'm looking at an
answer, you will very often be WRONG.

(views disabled)

------
yalogin
Honest question, why is Quora still relevant? I thought after the initial hype
for what ever reason their traction is gone (as expected). They are nothing
but a glorified version of yahoo answers. HN, Reddit and Stackoverflow do a
better job at what they do.

------
vijayr
One thing I can't understand with this "real name" stuff - why can't sites
like quora charge a one time fee, like Metafilter? When people pay real money,
you know who they are, they are less likely to troll, no? This has been
successful with Metafilter, why can't other sites copy this? It'll also be
another (small) source of revenue

------
axx
I really have the feeling we're all merely getting sold to advertisers. Where
are the real innovations from tech people? It is not about "social
interaction", in many ways it's only about getting as much data from the user
as possible, to sell it.

I can't say how much i hate the "social trend" in this era of the internet
boom.

"Yeah, our Product is a ripoff of Product X (proof concept, existing since
2000) BUT WE ADDED SOCIAL TO IT, ZOMG!!11"

What's bugging me even more is the fact, that there're so many stupid VCs who
think they'll invest in the next big thing and support stupid ideas, too blind
to see real innovations.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> I can't say how much i hate the "social trend" in this era of the internet
> boom.

It angers me greatly. I attribute it to tech going mainstream in a big way. It
waters down the entire industry. Worse, it feels like it has slowed down R&D
because everyone's so complacent with what we have.

------
lrei
The immediate solution is simple: Settings -> Views: Allow others to see what
content I've viewed in feed: No (yes) -- change to no.

It's creepy and disrespectful that they would turn this on by default and it
looks extremely desperate which makes me doubt quora's financial stability.
Which in turn makes me not want to spend time contributing to it (not that
I've made many contributions).

But this is the sort of thing FB would've done in their place... So I don't
know, maybe their staff simply has no understanding of how people feel about
privacy.

------
oth3r
One thing that stuck out to me in the article is the whole concept of
"anonymous reading."

When did the need to make the distinction of anonymous vs non-anonymous
reading arise? Anonymity was assumed for something as simple as picking up a
book or a newspaper. It sounds as awkward and unnatural to me as taking an
"anonymous shower" or anonymously picking my nose. Pretty scary that we're
headed down this path where fewer and fewer things are private.

------
wyclif
This is bad, bad juju on Quora's part. The Facebookisation of Quora is
something that makes my Spidey sense go off as well. Forcing "real" names.
Forcing reads into the public without warning. Lots of "hey, we're the coolest
social startup on the block."

Quora is overrated. They need to get it together, dial down the hype, and show
some freaking humility. To do that they'll need to stop abusing the users they
have.

------
peto123
This is disturbing. I hope this will not become a trend.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I don't think it will spread too much.

Nothing would kill Facebook quicker than then implementing this, for example.

~~~
Jacqued
Agreed. I'm on the verge of leaving facebook, I've been for quite some time.
Their stupid change in chat (people know when you read what they wrote) almost
made me quit, but Chrome extensions to disable it allowed me to stay.

With such a move, I would not stay one day longer on the "service".

~~~
crpatino
It's boiled frogs all the way down!

------
jmsduran
Although I don't have a Quora account, I definitely won't be signing up for
one after hearing this news.

I dislike the idea of passively sharing information. In my opinion, sharing
should be a conscious decision the user makes, not something that the user is
tricked or forced into.

~~~
Karunamon
How are you tricked or forced when you're told what's happening upfront and
told how to stop it if you don't like it?

It's not like the proverbial hyperspace bypass paperwork, it's literally 3
clicks.

I swear guys, some of you have both very oversensitive outrage modules and a
broad definition of deception. That goes to most everyone in this thread.

------
minikomi
Off topic I guess, but to me Quora seems to have passed it's peak for updates
to topics which I find interesting, unfortunately. I was not an early adopter,
and joined when the gated-community phase ended, selected my topics and
enjoyed quite a few good answers. A week later I opened it up on a train ride,
but the content had not changed at all.

And, perhaps more tellingly, in each topic the few scraps of fresh activity
each time I've opened the app since have been from exactly the same users.

------
jaredsohn
You can turn it off, but then you can't see who viewed things. (Similar to how
LinkedIn and OkCupid work with anonymous browsing.) And if you really want to
see I'm sure you can do so via another account. (I think it is possible
because okc and linkedin hide private data but quora hides public data.)

Instructions: [http://www.quora.com/Views-on-Quora/How-do-I-turn-off-the-
Vi...](http://www.quora.com/Views-on-Quora/How-do-I-turn-off-the-Views-
feature-on-Quora)

~~~
onwardly
This move by Quora pissed me off, but the only reason I'm keeping my account
is because they allowed me to turn it off.

Quite an effective way to destroy some goodwill they'd built up with me over
the past couple of years.

------
johnchristopher
Not entirely unrelated: today on Facebook I noticed there are groups I can't
browse without the group creator knowing which posts I have seen and which
posts I haven't.

[https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=409719555736128&in_co...](https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=409719555736128&in_context)

It might not be new but it was the first time I noticed it (and I immediately
left the group without thinking about it for even one second).

------
jonathansizz
I don't really understand why someone who has knowledge worth sharing would
just give it away to a private entity like Quora who will then make money off
your contributions.

If you do want to share knowledge for free (which is of course laudable),
there are plenty of other large, well-established websites that are free and
open and will remain so in the future. Or you could just set up a
personal/community website of your own.

------
muyuu
Quora seems nice but I cannot possibly feel comfortable with their policies,
even before this. I can only participate very selectively because of this. I
like the service and it has traction, too bad their invasiveness thresholds
are too lax for me to accept.

I'd rather just pay a small quantity to be honest. I'm not sure if an
alternative site working on subscriber money would be feasible.

------
angry-hacker
Why Google doesn't penalize them for serving different content to google bot
and to humans?! How can thy get away with it... I'm sure many people who work
for Google and are part of team that has authority to make those changes have
seen it..?-

------
grose
What value does this have over, say, an anonymized view count? While it's nice
to know that people have seen what you've written, does their identity really
need to be known?

~~~
jopt
Perhaps it is more attractive to advertisers then to users. Demographic
tracking etc.

------
chefsurfing
Recent changes that Quora has made to their interface ( several UI dark
patterns implemented to get people to automatically share / integrate with FB
/ Twitter ) as well as this move of hiding answers makes me believe that they
are desperate, not confident. I had high hopes for Quora from the beginning
but have been continually let down to the point where Quora seems like
ExpertsExchange 2.0 now.

------
jlukanta
Not all views are shared. [http://www.quora.com/Views-on-Quora/Which-of-my-
views-will-a...](http://www.quora.com/Views-on-Quora/Which-of-my-views-will-
and-which-views-wont-be-shared-through-Quoras-Views-feature/answer/Sandra-Liu-
Huang)

If you are too afraid to visit that link, try this one:
<http://pastebin.com/T2s9Vjxn>

------
joelthelion
There is space for competition in that area. StackExchange is pretty good, but
since they don't allow questions with subjective answers, they basically
exclude themselves from the vast majority of the market share. Then there is
quora, yahoo answers, ... There is certainly enough space for a few good
startups.

~~~
mmahemoff
StackExchange leaves a lot of open opportunities even in the areas they focus
on. The objectivity mantra means they'll ban "best programmer jokes", perhaps
understandable, but oddly they'll block questions like "best database for X,
best book on X" as being "Not Constructive". (I could understand "subjective",
but I can't see how it's not useful data.)

So when I see things like this, it makes me think there's surely an
opportunity and the opportunity falls squarely in Quora's lap. But depending
how they execute on it, they might still be leaving the space wide open for
others.

------
ojbyrne
That headline seems unnecessarily incendiary, since it tells you in the last
paragraph how to opt out.

------
krelian
I was curious so I just had a look with my (fake name) account and the option
called "Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed" was set at "No".
I don't recall ever playing with that setting so this may be a recent change
on their part to avoid the backlash.

~~~
gojomo
Mine was also 'No', but then I visited the homepage (<http://www.quora.com>)
and closed the notice there about the new Views feature... which toggled the
setting to 'Yes', without any message to that effect.

So try viewing the homepage and then check the setting, or closing the fewture
notification... it may then be 'Yes'.

------
benjaminwootton
I've never signed up to Quora, but the last time I visited, it looked as
though I was logged in which I assumed was via my Twitter cookie. (I don't
have a Facebook account.)

It's not happening now so possibly was part of some A/B test.

That coupled with this passive browsing would be a step too far.

------
yumraj
This is one of the reasons I keep fake accounts, including on quora, FB and
Twitter, to read the content. Due to the fake name in the quora account, I
don't have edit privileges, which is perfectly fine with me as it is at most a
minor inconvenience at times.

------
vlasta2
I do not have a Quora account, but I understand their move and it may not be
all bad. There are 3 ways how a company may handle user passive privacy:

1\. Not collect any information (in this case who read what article) at all.
Obviously that company would be at a big disadvantage, having no access to a
useful set of signals.

2\. Collect the information and use it for their own goals.

3\. Collect the information and make it freely available.

If I understand the article correctly, Quora went from strategy #2 to #3. From
my perspective, this is a positive move. In case #3, users are aware of what
is happening with their private information and may log out if they do not
want to be tracked this way. It is way better than living in peaceful
ignorance as in case #2. Also, the company cannot sell the private info,
because it is publicly available.

~~~
unimpressive
> Also, the company cannot sell the private info, because it is publicly
> available.

Uh. Maybe you don't understand why people don't like it when companies sell
their data.

It's because it ends up in the hands of every shady marketing agency and
intelligence organization on earth. Making it public just means that these
parties can get it with no barrier to entry.

See: Usenet, where any email address that's ever touched it is supposedly
under constant siege by spam.

~~~
vlasta2
Maybe I have expressed myself not clearly enough, so once more: I prefer the
collected information to be public because then it is clear to everyone that
it is being collected and many more people are aware of the implications. I
think it is better than when the same kind of information is being secretly
sold while users have a false feeling of privacy.

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username3
Friendster did the same thing. Look where it is now.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=friendster+who+viewed+me>

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prodigal_erik
Non-anonymous passive sharing discourages curiosity and experimentation by
giving them boundless potential for embarrassment. It's hard to imagine worse
long-term damage to users' humanity.

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bobobo1618
Just thought I'd point out that the method they used for the obfuscation is a
simple CSS rule. It can be quite easily disabled with the developer tools, an
extension or a proxy.

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january14n
Hate this update from them. I think what have they done was a EPIC Fail in
their part.

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rdl
I wouldn't mind this feature if it were totally opt-in.

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zerop
It can be turned off easily. No sweat !!

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joelthelion
Just use a fake name :)

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mschalle
Quora, you fucked up.

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wilfra
I've learned to go with the flow and trust them when they make changes like
this. My first impression is usually to want the 'old Quora' back but once I
get used to them, the changes do nearly always improve the experience. I would
imagine this will be the same.

They are very skilled at interpreting needs and desires we didn't know we had
and quickly correcting themselves the times they do make mistakes (like the
recent notification spam issues).

edit: lol @ downvotes. Unacceptable to not be a Quora hater I guess...

~~~
jcc80
_very skilled at interpreting needs and desires we didn't know we had_

This is basically the same line that I use when I'm mocking targeted ads and
joking around with friends about how thankful they should be for them. If your
edit wasn't there I would have guessed this was a level aka fooling someone w/
sarcasm or non-serious remark.

~~~
wilfra
It's also the same line people use when they describe why Steve Jobs was so
brilliant.

There is a difference, however, in explaining away unpopular changes as being
this and actually being good at it. Quora is actually good at it.

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89a
Genuinely never understood the hype or money behind this.

It's just ExpertSexChange all over again

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assente
Yes you can. With a little hack
[http://assente.vega9.com/it/how_to_bypass_quoras_text_hiding...](http://assente.vega9.com/it/how_to_bypass_quoras_text_hiding_for_unregistered_users)

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mikebracco
Well as Eric Schmidt said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone
to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." ;)

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/21/top-10-the-
quotable-e...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/21/top-10-the-quotable-
eric-schmidt/)

~~~
houk
Bullshit.

That quote is based on the (false) premise that privacy is there to conceal
illegal/shady activities. It puts you in one of two groups; You're either
guilty of something and have a reason to hide it, or you're not guilty and
have no reason to hide anything. It doesn't include the possibility that you
might not be guilty of something but may still want to keep something hidden.
I'll give you an example. You might NOT want to give your phone number when
you register on some social website because you don't want that data used for
marketting purposes.

