When I first started using Quora, the website was as innocent as Facebook when it began. A platform in which questions from curious people all over the world posed to experts, in my case, meant to challenge the forgone societal conclusions they too discovered, hold humanity hostage.
I have answered many questions, often repeatedly because of Quora’s inability to collate the same questions, from people as young as 14 years old on the subjects of policy, capital, and innovation, and racking up north of 20,000 views per month. I was “rewarded” by Quora, a 2018 top writer of the categories I was put in, which supposedly came with a free subscription to The New York Times that never reached me.
Moderation
And then, after answering hundreds of questions over two years, often with referral back to my blog for more context, a moderator by the name of Tatiana Estévez decides I should no longer include those links at the bottom of my answers.
That was an interesting moderation decision, considering most of my articles refer to a higher normalization of truth that describes why the undesirable consequences explained by my answer are derived from an improper identification of cause. A cause which I describe on my site. Copying that in on every answer would violate another one of Quora’s infantile moderation policies.
So, I stopped writing on Quora. Completely. Still producing a decent amount of monthly views eight months later. Just today, I got the following message from Tatiana Estévez at Quora, asking me to respond to a survey:
Hi Georges,
It is totally up to you if you respond to the survey and you’re free to disregard all future surveys. However, please note, that these surveys are an opportunity to give negative feedback if you’ve experienced any issues, and allows me to see what issues might cause writers to stop using Quora.
Thanks
Tatiana
To which I respond,
I sent you my negative comments months ago. Use those to complete your survey.
The above-posted ban is the message I received from Quora within half an hour. A ban that prevents me from logging in, even as the company continues to serve up my 815 answers to readers, so much for “spam”, having already produced north of 309,000 views.
Quora Smorah
Now, I do not really care about Quora since my website contains all the same answers I was astute enough to copy from Quora each time I answered a question. I saw the storm of Quora’s control brewing and read how other people have been tossed out for supposedly violating their moderation principles. So, banning me from Quora is their loss, not mine, and that of many people who, as a trusted source to them, asked follow-up questions since.
However, the bigger picture of Quora’s behavior is a very dangerous societal one and a clear example of how technology companies violate and destroy the fundamental precepts of our constitution, and thus in one fell swoop affect the very freedoms upon which our society was founded.
The Slide of Quora’s hand
Instead of emphasizing articles of how to create a better world for us all, Quora elects to put on a pedestal the endless pornographic imagery and sexual stories that garner publicity based on their salacious, and I must admit at times clever reads, portraying to describe “real-life” nature. But the idiocracy of Quora doesn’t stop there.
Quora moderation collapsed one of my answers because I criticized the economic policies of China. No, we are not allowed to do so, says Quora, only to reverse stance when I revolted. The screenshot of their correction is below. You be the judge of what policy my article violated; a copy lives here.
I also noticed how a popular article in which I chastized venture capitalists for having become subprime was suddenly and suspiciously cut off from accumulating any more page views.
And the slide of Quora’s integrity continues by the company adding third-party media content to improve the readership of media outlets unable to achieve their monolithic readership, now mixing user-generated content generated by supposed domain experts with drivel from tabloids.
Quora is desperately chasing only “the news” that sells.
Big danger looms
Indeed, with the rat-race for page views, Quora has become the gutter of societal knowledge. But much worse, their moderation now regulates what an innocent world deems to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Take a step back and envision how technology companies will do the same when deploying AI. Aiming to control us even further, with a vile-maxim of corporate greed, and in the same denial of well-tested constitutional safeguards.
Facebook started rather innocently too, only to quickly morph into a trojan horse and under the veil of cheap societal do-goodery, managed to acquire massive amounts of users. Those users are now socially entangled and highly dependent on the platform and unable to leave for a viable alternative. Facebook constitutionally deprives people of self-governance, now relegated to Facebook’s rule of a nanny state. Few are aware of the severe ramifications.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Goethe
The Bullies of Technology
The behavior of Quora exemplifies why technology must be stopped from bullying people’s constitutional rights to freedom. Technology, like Quora, makes us less free, while portraying to do the opposite. After initial Trojan Horse adoption, Quora will turn into another financial pump-and-dump scheme meant to boost the valuation of its upcoming IPO from its ill-gotten page-view advertisements. Wait for the Facebook debacle to repeat itself with Quora, leaving the general public, as the last in the chain of greater-fool investors, to swallow the inevitable downside.
Technology must be made to subjugate to the rule of the sovereign states in which it operates. And I cannot wait for our governments to open their eyes and put the smackdown on the blatant societal malpractice of many technology companies. Until that point, do not ever trust technology companies with your assets.
