I hate you, Quora

After battling for long, it's finally an end to my writing journey on Quora

I hate Quora for so many reasons. I used to love it for way more than that.

I was in high school when I jumped onto that bandwagon because, apparently, there was an anonymous, hidden group on Quora when all the cool kids joined. Later turned out, that only a version of that story was true, and it was nothing like that. Talk of the past.

I created a profile on the platform and started reading answers. Oh, wait, did I just assume everyone here is familiar with that question-answer platform? I think by the end of this year, we’ll start reading about the downfall of this platform and its eventual fading into oblivion. That is the trajectory Quora is following.

So here is how Quora defines itself: “Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge.” I don’t think they are doing a good job—or even a sub-par job—by launching an AI platform and feeding all the data that millions of Quorans have written down through years of their presence on Quora and after decades of experience and expertise in their fields.

Now, if you open Quora, all you see is your feed full of advertisements. And if, by any chance, some question catches your fancy and you click open to read it, the first thing you see is their AI answering that question. Quora, if I had to read an AI-generated answer to my question, would I not go to ChatGPT or Gemini? Why would I come to your platform then?

I used to go to Quora to read human-written answers. The kind of answer that had a story and some element of human connection to it. Not a blatantly put, cohesively attached series of pointers with a conclusion. Quora failed every stakeholder—its readers and writers.

Many of the Quorans now recount the past days of glory that this platform had. On a question, “Is Quora dead because all the popular Quorans had left?” a Quora user writes:

“Quora is not dead but is a pale shadow of its former self today.

“The people who are using Quora today perhaps can’t understand the popularity of Quora back in 2015–2022.”

A comment on another answer goes like this:

“There has been a downfall in both the quality of the content and intent of present day Quora users.

Instead of scintillating the mind the platform is driven by the Quora users towards titillating the senses. Such inane questions were posed to me as “ What is the name of my dog?”

Yes, some dedicated Quorans keep the fire burning; but, Quora is gradually turning into a graveyard of the intelligent, inquisitive, curious seeker.

I feel it. I feel every answer, every comment, and every message like that on the platform. Quora used to be different. And then the platform decides to fuck itself over.

From a bird’s eye view, it looks like the management of the company is aimless. On one hand where they launched monetization programs, like Quora Partner Program and Quora+, and invited writers to paywall their answers and earn money and urged readers to get a monthly subscription to have unlimited access to the platform with no ads, on the other hand, they launched an AI chatbot platform called Poe and integrated it with their existing platform.

Either they should have taken a stance to be a place that houses human creativity and storytelling, or completely shifted their business to the likes of ChatGPT, if that made more business sense. What’s this position of being in between and not doing any better? Their partner program, space subscription model and a bigger Quora+ subscription have not yielded good results. As one writer points out, “no one is subscribing.”

Their AI chatbot platform, called Poe (such a weird name tbh), is their last hope for survival because the trajectory Quora is going on doesn’t look so promising. There is a huge influx of low-quality content on the platform and on top of that, many insightful writers who used to drive the platform’s growth and PR have already left.

Why I hate Quora is also due to the lack of transparency and leadership. Throughout its history, Quora has seldom made important metrics public. Those metrics help writers and readers build trust in the platform. One aspect is moderation. This platform has been notorious for its absurd moderation guidelines. From the outside, it looks perfect, but it’s anything but that.

When I used to scroll Quora a lot, almost every day I encountered answers where Quorans were disheartened and talked about how their favourite answer got taken down by the moderation team. Quora can’t take down the cringe and low-quality content that is flooding the platform, but it’s quick to take down some of the most nuanced answers ever. It’s annoying.

Five of my answers lately got deleted because they contained “sexually explicit content.” On opening the URL under those notifications, I found out that there was absolutely no way I could read the content of my answer, nor was there any way to raise an appeal for the same.

From the URL, I could interpret that the question was:

“What is the difference between love and infatuation? Is love only a kind of infatuation?”

So, apparently, writing about love and infatuation counts as “sexually explicit content” now. Wow!

We’re done, Quora. I will not be posting anything, more than anything, I’d stop hoping and praying for your comeback. Your re-birth from the ashes like a phoenix.

I hate you, Quora. You failed the writers and the readers alike.