Hello to those who know me from over at Quora. I’ve had an account here for a while, but never really felt the need to use it, until something that happened on 11 June 2019.
I have made a number of friends at Quora who later got banned or just fed up with it, including one highly controversial political writer that I remain in occasional contact with on other social media. After he was banned from Quora for not being “nice,” or at least not being good for business, he referred to the site as “Whora.”
They did something to me today that certainly lives up to that name, although I’m reluctant to even say that, because $20 hookers are more honest than this.
Anyway, early this afternoon, I got one of their inane “Quora Moderation” notifications that one of my answers violated a policy on Quora. They deemed it so “bad” that they just didn’t “collapse” the answer — hide it so you have to make an extra click to see it, they deleted the answer so only I could even access it anymore. This is the answer in question:
Funny how it was allowed to stand for eight days and get over 11,500 pageviews and then was abruptly deleted. I didn’t even get an email or a private message about it, just a popup notification. The log for the answer said it was deleted for spamming.
Suuuure, Whora. Sorry, I meant Quora. I appealed this and asked nicely what policy I violated, and said I thought the answer was very helpful for people who will soon lose their ability to use ad-blockers if they use Chrome for a browser. I criticized the Google policy (not a violation), and then offered alternatives for Chrome users.
I’m pretty sure my “spamming” consisted of giving people ideas on how they might potentially block Quora’s own ads, which have become increasing pervasive over the last year or so. And we can’t have that, can we? Quora likes the idea that people will continue to use Chrome and not be able to block their ads.
They turned down my appeal about a half-hour ago:
No response other than that. Utterly gutless and laughable. They see this on Medium and they might ban me next, but I don’t care. People need to see this, because it directly relates to Quora’s credibility as a site. They just censored a perfectly acceptable answer for no reason other than it might cost them a few ad-views on down the line…or else they have some connection with Google and Google didn’t like what I said, but I doubt that. They’re so big that they’re not going to care about some amateur techie helping people block a few ads. Nah, this was Quora’s doing. I may not be a big deal with Google, but I am at Quora. As of 12 May 2019, I’m the 38th most viewed writer in the site’s entire history.
Quora’s mission statement is as follows:
Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. A vast amount of the knowledge that would be valuable to many people is currently only available to a few — either locked in people’s heads, or only accessible to select groups. We want to connect the people who have knowledge to the people who need it, to bring together people with different perspectives so they can understand each other better, and to empower everyone to share their knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the world.
Funny, I thought I shared some very useful knowledge with the world with that answer, and empowered some people with it. But I guess the mission statement isn’t applicable when it might cost Quora a few pennies of ad revenue.
They could at least have had the guts to tell the truth and just told me I was potentially hurting their bottom line. You know what, I would have respected that and not said another word. They are a business, after all. But this was spineless.