
This is a bit f'd, Quora - webwright
http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/29340797003/this-is-a-bit-fucked-quora
======
cletus
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-q...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-quora-why-
benchmark-was-right-to-pay-up/)

~~~
meritt
Quora is simply turning into ExpertsExchange. I haven't found anything
terrible insightful on Quora that I can't find at the top of an HN, Reddit or
StackOverflow thread.

Never quite understood the hype centered around it.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
_Never quite understood the hype centered around it._

It had tech celebrities. It was known as the place where famous silicon valley
/ tech people (from google to even microsoft) would answer questions in their
gated community away from all the noise of Yahoo answers. Of course now Quora
is just another Q&A site but back when it first started, I remember it well.
It felt so exclusive. Registration wasn't open to the public. When a question
was asked it was answered by people who mattered or were in the industry. The
answers weren't nessessarily better but they felt like they mattered more
because of who they came from.

They used celebrity status to promote the site, then opened it to the public.
Before they had something special. Now it's just another Q&A site. Looking
back in hindsight, it might have been better to keep the exclusive gated
community feel where only people with credentials (startups) are allowed in.

How would the community keep itself exclusive? I thought about that last year
and came up with this: [http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/invention-
creating-and-...](http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/invention-creating-and-
maintaining-exclusive-communities-through-crowdsourcing/)

~~~
dkersten
I could never figure out how to actually search Quora to find answers to
_stuff_. Maybe you have to log in to do this, but I don't want to create an
account just to see if I like the sites content enough to create an account,
so I never used Quora and likely never will, especially after reading the
article.

------
blhack
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.

~~~
its_so_on
Blhack,

I ran across this comment of yours -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377315> \- and certainly appreciate your
privacy concerns. A healthy private life is undoubtedly everyone's personal
choice.

At the same time, HackerNews is YCombinator's tech blog, and highly visible.
Frankly, your opinion comes off as somewhat paranoid. It's not that it isn't
justified, I'm not saying that one way or another, but I would strongly
consider the impact statements like this have on your image in the social
space.

I heard back from Kenneth. He actually said that your social strategy is a
"shambles", which is excusable, and also that you "had 0 interest in improving
this" -- which is not.

He said that you were more interested in getting to the moon than in building
a social network around the project.

blhack, the money we entrusted you with not appropriate to spend idly dreaming
up conspiracy theories.

The world is social. People chirp, tweedle, and most recently iMessage those
they care about and feel a community with.

This community is now your top priority. I want to be able to show Ken that
you have put together at least 10,000 likes and 30,000 followers by the end of
the year. Consider this "stage one" of your rocketry design phase.

While we are not saying that failure to meet this metric means the board will
necessarily replace you, consider it a part of your job description.

We are also denying your proposed budget. Please work on your social program.

Your board.

~~~
jrockway
What? I'm not sure what's going on here. If you want to send blhack an email,
do that. This personal letter is not an appropriate use of HN comments. And
sending private messages in public is quite non-cool.

~~~
SkyMarshal
I think it was meant as a demonstration of the 'creepy social web'.

~~~
jrockway
The comment-stalking is creepy, but posting content publicly that you
explicitly post publicly isn't.

------
ivankirigin
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
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
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.

~~~
achompas
Agreed 100%. HNers belly-ache about Quora all day, but there is an incredible
amount of information on there. If you doubt me, just go look at the best
answers under the Machine Learning topic.

Part of Quora's value comes from identifying answerers' identities. HNers see
this as a plight on the social web, yet they can (a) still turn off views in
their settings at any time, and (b) use other forums with relaxed views on
privacy if they wish.

~~~
illuminate
"HNers belly-ache about Quora all day, but there is an incredible amount of
information on there"

That's an exceptionally strange dichotomy, people are annoyed BECAUSE there is
useful information there, and the company is enforcing mostly unnecessary
"social" aspects to access the data. If the data was useless, why would anyone
care when they change their policy to something aggressively anti-privacy?

------
cheald
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.

------
ozataman
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
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.

~~~
samstave
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
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
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.

------
timmyd
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
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?

------
diego
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>

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"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-
Mo...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-
View)

~~~
AznHisoka
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
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.

------
omegaworks
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.

------
wpietri
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-
Faceboo...](http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Facebook-
signup-on-inbound-links-from-Facebook) And the answer I wrote:
[http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-
li...](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)

~~~
samstave
Quora was founded by facebookers. People who actually have the worst fucking
view online about what should be private and what should be public.

People who have no digital-cultural compass because the only reference point
they have is from working at Facebook, thus they think that "this is how it
was thought of and done at Facebook - and Facebook is the most overly hyped
company in history, so I must be a fucking genius!"

No thanks.

Done with quora forever.

~~~
wpietri
I get your perspective, but I think Facebook is basically correct in the long
term. Privacy is basically a historical accident belonging to the few hundred
years in the west where transportation tech got ahead of information
technology.

An excellent read on the topic is David Brin's "The Transparent Hand". He
basically makes the argument that we face one of two futures: either all of us
know everybody's business or a small elite controls the flow of information.
Basically, our choice is a surveillance democracy vs a surveillance state.

I think he's right that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
That's not to say that Quora's moves aren't fucking annoying, but I do think
just refusing to participate won't make a long-term difference in how things
turn out.

~~~
antidoh
> Privacy is basically a historical accident belonging to the few hundred
> years in the west where transportation tech got ahead of information
> technology.

I don't think privacy should be dictated by whatever is possible with
technology, it should be explicitly decided by people. Whichever way they
decide.

~~~
wpietri
Sure, but the way it was historically decided by most people was a position of
little or no privacy. In a small town, everybody knows everybody's business.

It's only urbanization, which only works because of good transportation, that
made that untenable. So those of us who like privacy finally had some.

But information technology is making it possible for people to keep track of
basically everybody they care to again. So we're going to go right back to
what most people like, which is life as soap opera.

------
gojomo
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/bewar...](http://hitchhikerguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2006/04/beware-
of-leopard-douglas-adams-quote.html)

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

~~~
mcphilip
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
>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.

------
incision
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
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
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.

------
ctdonath
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.

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

~~~
cheald
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
"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.

------
SebMortelmans
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.

------
dotmanish
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/>) 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.

------
engtech
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.

------
joe_bloggs
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-...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-
account)

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/>) should
try and do something about.

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

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

~~~
brandoncor
I don't believe that's true. I see a "Deactivate" button in my settings. Or is
that not the same thing as "deleting"?

~~~
jlarocco
No, it's true.

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-
Quora-...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-
account)

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...

------
ajju
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

------
cs702
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.

------
electic
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.

------
justinph
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-
mo...](http://www.quora.com/Personal-Finance/How-much-money-have-most-people-
saved-by-the-time-they-are-30-years-old)

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

------
ereckers
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.

------
mcgwiz
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.

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

------
chefsurfing
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
:)

------
codezero
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>

------
stfu
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.

~~~
malloreon
your username is stfu.

------
dm8
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.

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

------
cpeterso
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-
Mo...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-is-Quora-moving-to-Mountain-
View)

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

------
confluence
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
> 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.

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damian2000
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.

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alanh
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.)

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robforman
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.

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pbreit
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.

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bambax
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?)

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guelo
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
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
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.

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

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espeed
You can disable that in your settings.

~~~
brandoncor
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.

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sidcool
This looks like a big gaffe by Quora.

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valdiorn
And that's why you don't use Quora

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lucian303
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.

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89a
never understood why people bothered with this garbage

Expert Sexchange 2.0

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heyitsnick
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
You are right, people shouldn't jump to conclusions, but, unfortunately, they
often do.

~~~
drharris
+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.

