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.
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:
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.