Quora provides a Q&A format to exploit users for their own financial gain. The more views an answer to a question generates, the more revenue it will attract in the form of advertising.

Sadly, this is similar to what Facebook started out as... until it gained enough mainstream support to attract anti-social, mostly extreme right-wing, trolls, whose goal was to spread mindless hate and misinformation... for the express purpose of silencing those who disagreed with them and, ultimately, destroying that platform.

Quora has simply repeated what Facebook did, and still does. Quora has its own rules and 'Community Standards' by which users must abide. It has 'moderators' who will limit free speech by applying some from of regulation, such as 'respect' and not misusing it to spread idiot hate, make threats, harm others, or use their 'free' speech to deny others the same right.

Now, it claims to do this, and is compelled to do so by some very thin laws that struggle to keep up with technology. The fact that social media and IT is over a decade old now tells you all you need to know about how out of touch, incompetent and or corrupt certain politicians and law makers are.

And this is where the problems begin. Trolls are not isolated from society, lurking in the basements of their mothers and appearing only in social media to inflict themselves on others. Many of them have jobs. And they take their sociopathic, psychotic personalities with them, unleashing it wherever they think they can get away with it.

You may start to see now why social media is popular. Victims of people like that can share experiences where they have encounters such toxic humans. Domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse, and even at the hands of the so-called help that turns out to be secondary abusers, such as police, child protection staff, so-called advocates, lawyers, politicians, and so forth.

Obviously, if a victim finds others like them, and they form help-groups, this not only risks denying an offender their victim or hunting ground, but also risks movements that force politicians to adopt and enact positive change to end such toxic cultures. That's why trolls gather to attack others on social media. To disrupt and end that, and the only way they can feel good about themselves is by making others suffer.

This is where Quora, like Facebook, lost its way. Quora discovered they could generate more views and content by encouraging toxic behavior - by escalating conflict. This generates more revenue. As a result, many of the questions and answers are examples of some of the most vile, festering socio-cultural behavior you are ever likely to witness. And why people of all ages should avoid it.

You find trolls almost everywhere, no matter the original topic. Racists, misogynists, homophobes, pedophiles, neo-Nazis, extremists from the political left and (mostly) right, unhinged conspiracy theorists, and almost every other stripe of over-privileged, ill-educated and mentally unhinged freelance bigot.

And they post those views with the express purpose of causing anger, hate, harm and silencing everyone who dares challenge them. Good thing for the moderators, right? Nope. The moderators appear to use an automated system to 'assess' any reports. It seems to be a coin toss. As a result, offensive posts that violate the rules remain as often as they are removed.

Worse, after a complaint has been rejected, it appears that content is immune to any further efforts to lodge a complaint. From anyone. You can always block trolls yourself, or delete or disable comments on your own answers, providing the answer isn't controlled by a group controlling the question. But the trolls have figured out a way around this, and how to weaponize the reporting system.

First, they can simply report an answer or comment and let the fifty-fifty automate moderator system deal with it. If it remains, they can share the answer and add a nasty, toxic, often personal attack as an into to what is shared. And in so doing, they can control the responses. And then weaponize the system against their victim if the victim responds in kind.

This occurs most often when a troll disagrees with what someone says, even if the question asked for an opinion based answer. Unable to use coercive control tactics to bully the target into recanting their own views, and remaining silent, the troll will simply report the answer and tag it as spam, racism, or whatever. Despite the fact that none of that is present. Moderators don't actually bother to read the reported content. They simply toss that coin.

One of the most stunning incidents of this involved a victim simply sharing the share and quoting back at the troll what the troll said in their share intro. They did it after the troll comment was left in place by Quora for a year. Their own response was deleted by Quora moderators within 5 minutes for violating the 'respect' and 'retaliation' rules. Think about that.

The victim responded by quoting the troll back at the troll, and that was deleted as 'disrespectful'... but the trolls words that were quoted were not. And Quora recognized this as 'retaliation' because what they responded to was clearly offensive... but Quora did not remove the original troll content. They left it in place.
You can appeal a decision and maybe have your answer restored... but appeals are automatically rejected. Automatically. So not an appeal process at all. You can email Quora to review the situation... if you can locate a viable address to do that. It's not easy. You may get lucky and find someone who will, after a few weeks, realize what's happened, restore your content, and maybe apologize. Or it can all go sideways.

Remember how I mentioned vile people also have jobs? If you get one of them, one that's managed to infiltrate into a place it can violate victims of horrible situations, it gets much worse. At best they'll simply ignore your complaint and you'll get no response at all. Just like the police, child protection, lawyers and politicians do far too often, and which can lead to devastating consequences. At worst, you'll find a lot of your content gets removed, and maybe your account deactivated and deleted altogether.

I've been a part of Quora for just 18 months. I've written around 220 answers. I have 165,000 plus views and about 1-2% of them have led to upvotes. Most people don't bother leaving upvotes even if they like something, unless it trends and they want to be part of the mob. And, I suspect, a lot of views are simply bots doing it to help Quora generate the numbers to boost advertising revenue.

You can kind of tell. An answer that's just an idiot skid-mark on the pages of history will get no traffic for weeks, then hundreds or thousands in a single day, then nothing at all again. Others that are insightful, amusing, well-written and thought provoking may just get tumbleweeds.

But, over the last year there's been a sudden influx of new users. Most of them extreme right wing and trolls. That influx coincided with Facebook's purge. One resulting from Federal US investigation into troll-farms and the spread of misinformation, particularly in regards to elections and pandemics. It followed one from a few years earlier, as troll victims made an exodus from Facebook to escape the predation, and the indifference of so-called moderators.

Ironically, the refugees joined Quora. Answers to questions include an option to allow comments, a social media component. It worked well until Facebook finally purged some of its trolls. The trolls, of course, left that hunting ground and searched for new victims, finding them on Quora. And repeated the process.

Quora is at that end-stage of its productive life and utility. Like Facebook, not even rebranding can help it. There's going to be a sudden big hit to its user numbers and profits soon, maybe even as a result of a Federal investigation as it finally attracts the attention of the media following something really, really nasty. It's just a matter of time before tragedy strikes, the media sees profit in the story, and politicians respond in an effort to secure votes.

So, unless you like being subjected to trolls of the very worst variety, or you're one yourself, Quora is probably a place to avoid. Trust me, step away from social-media sites like this one for a while. Detox. You'll find life is much better. Less anxiety, less stress, less anger and frustration. What little joy being able to share ideas with others you get isn't worth the rest. Find a better social media platform or, better yet, avoid it altogether.

So many people say that Quora is left-wing and communist, but leftists and communists on Quora are likely to be a minority, what most of the times you see on Quora are right-wing extremists, neoliberal extremists and capitalist extremists bashing everyone who is not right-wing, being also hardly Holocaust deniers, Jair Bolsonaro's genocide deniers, Capitalist genocides deniers, Neoliberal genocide deniers, Native American genocide deniers, Colonial/Neocolonial genocide deniers, West European Holodomors deniers (mainly deniers of the holodomors that happened in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Germany), Anticommunist genocide deniers (like Pinochet genocide deniers, Suharto genocide deniers, McCarthy genocide deniers, Churchill genocide deniers, Kolchak genocide deniers, White Russia genocide deniers, Kuomitang genocide deniers, White Finland genocide deniers, NATO genocide deniers, Western Bloc genocide deniers, Rhodesian genocide deniers, and even anticommunists defending that all communists and all leftists should be genocided), openly anti-Global South people, extremely racist, extremely xenophobic, extremely speciesist and Quora seems to be completely fine with that, and if you answer them in any tone, you're banned for "hate speech". And also I have seen a lot of extremely anticommunist and antileftist questions, answers and comments there and if you reply to them you're banned. It happens in literally all languages that Quora is actually avaliable. And also, Quora is a very antitheist and atheist extremist website as well, it is full of antitheists, atheist zealots, atheist fundamentalists and atheist extremists who can't even tolerate religious/spiritual/esoteric/metaphysical beliefs in any form, try to imagine r/atheism and r/religiousfruitcake but like one thousand times worse, that is what Quora is actually about, and if you answer any antitheist or atheist in any form or even defend your beliefs, like pointing out that antitheism and atheism are religions, ideologies and beliefs as well, same way for neopositivism, scientism, humanism, secularism and evidentialism, you're banned for "hate speech", same way if you say that nowadays science became a literal religion, ideology, belief system, opinion system, sect, cult, and also a hate ideology against anything that is not "scientific", you're banned for doing "hate speech", while on Quora you have a lot of very hateful things said by right-wingers and antitheists and they're still there! Quora is a completely cesspool on the question of religion x atheism; capitalism x communism; right-wing x left-wing; politcs; religion; spirituality; science; popular culture; popular media and related topics. I can also talk about how much Quora is toxic when it is about popular culture and how much people can't even handle criticism of popular culture, such as pointing out how much popular culture is filled with hate, racism, imperialism, xenophobia, speciesism, misotheism, antitheism and such, as well as the so called Quora "scientists" can't even handle any criticism of science and always try to point out "logical fallacies" on your criticism or even just knock out of the park all your arguments by calling it "antiscience", "science denial" and "pseudoscience". And it is even worse how much Google often put Quora results in the top 3 results or even in the first page results, it is a remind that Google doesn't actually care about "trustworthness" but rather about popularity and about social tampering, Google is also a tool of social tampering, just like Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia, Facebook, Instagram and the so called "fact-checkers", it is very likely Wikipedia being extremely biased in favor of right-wing views on all leftist articles and about antitheist views on all religious/spiritual/esoteric/metaphysical articles. And that is funny how do we already live in this 1984-ish and TUNWO-ish (TUNWO is The United Nations World Order) society because of The Big Tech and because of neoliberalism and almost anyone talks about that, or say that it is left-wing and such, what I see the most is this TUNWO being very anticommunist and antileftist, and very neoliberal as well. This systemic one-dimensional society is also a really big problem nowadays as well. Quora is a website for be avoided at best, and it is better you to develop your own way of thinking and your own way of reason than taking everything those right-wingers, antitheists, "scientists" and "experts" say on the Internet and on mass media.

My advice is that if you like as I do about Quora, you should avoid Quora and focus on develop your own thinking and reason, and always being careful with that those right-wingers, antitheists, "scientists" and "experts" say on the Internet and on mass media. And also, we need to struggle for build a better world and fight this TUNWO society and 1984 society we live in nowadays as well.

I started writing physics answers on Quora because I went to college for it and love discussing it. I found so many highly inaccurate answers on the site. For example, I wrote an answer on length contraction and included John Bell's Spaceship Paradox as support for my answer as well as other sources. Out of about 30 answers to the question only two were correct and they were not the most upvoted. I wrote to many of the highest upvoted answers and explained why their answer was incorrect and included sources to back everything up. Many of them got defensive and/or deleted my comments. Answer writers can delete comments in Quora and the main Quora feed only shows the one answer on a particular topic so many casual Quora readers will think the answer is factual. Answers are pretty much deemed "correct" by massed upvoting which is not how science or any discussion of topics where facts and logic can be used should be judged. One person did try to fix their answer but I went back to it about a dozen times and it was still wrong for yet a different reason. The person had an ideological belief on how Relativity "should work" and kept wanting to incorporate it into his answer. If people can become ideological on something as well-tested and as hard science as Special Relativity even in the face of overwhelming evidence and their answer is still massively upvoted there's a problem.

I saw another answer by an American hating European who stated UK houses are smaller than US houses because it's colder in the UK than the US. This answer had 2,600 upvotes and had dozens of other easy to verify false statements. There are many areas where statements could be debated as information may be incomplete or many different reasonings may have support (politics or economics for example) but saying UK houses are smaller than US houses because of heating is so ridiculously wrong. It only takes one person legitimately disputing a statement to falsify it. Voting by mob rule is very wrong as the mob on average is not an expert. Many laypersons just upvote answers because they sound good to them.

Answers with too many down votes get hidden from most people's view. Well-written answers are all too often down voted. People often upvote the answers knowing they're wrong. I pointed out factually wrong information on some answers and the person's thousand of followers attacked me with nonsense. They never addressed anything I said directly and mostly did ad hominem attacks. The worst one was the anti-American writer I mentioned earlier (I honestly thought they did not understand but later found out they were knowingly lying). This writer only cares about spreading anti-American propaganda. Too many writers seek upvotes and likes above everything else. Moderators do not care (if anything they are also pushing for views and upvotes).

The Be Kind Be Respectful guideline and other moderation guidelines are highly subjective. I've had moderators take down comments I've written when I included facts backing up everything I said and attacked no one. "Kindness" is very subjective. It's not "kind" to burst someone's ideological bubble by posting a countering view. Most people are able to rationalize views they hate as "unkind." The human ability to rationalize always amazes me. Someone says A and another person rationalizes they said B. Quora policy and the non-transparent nature of moderation makes it all too easy for moderators to rationalize the deletion of any content they don't like. History has shown us that anyone with the power to censor abuses that power. Only a very strong and transparent policy is capable of stopping rampant moderator abuse. Quora does not have this.

People who become moderators believe in moderating speech. Those who believe in moderating speech the most value "kindness" and "compassion" above "logic" and "reasoning." Those who believe in free speech and open debate the most are unlikely to become moderators. They feel it's their duty to stamp out all "hurtful" content. Except any debate or search for factual information will likely hurt people's feelings. Someone getting an F on a physics test is "hurtful" to the student but if the student legitimately gets the answers wrong then that's simply reality. I see Quora Moderators deleting content heavily based on ideological grounds. The content simply upsets the readers of the space (Quora is broken into different spaces for different topics). Different spaces in Quora also have different moderators and they use inconsistent moderation. All of this makes Quora overall somewhat left leaning but individual spaces become echo chambers that match the ideological leaning of the moderators of the space.

If you upvote content from a certain user or space Quora sends you more of that type of content. It makes everyone's feed into an echo chamber where many of the writers are actively seeking to push an ideological agenda and people directly countering the answers are suppressed.

I've had responses taken down by moderation and no reasoning is given (I've never had a reason given nor was I ever suspended from Quora). I do an appeal and give a lengthy reason why the content does not violate any guidelines and they almost always put it back up. I've had this happen dozens of times. The content is usually then flagged again a few days or week later and I defend it again. Generally, the moderators eventually decide to remove it for NO REASON given. I understand that bots and users can flag content but how does a moderator review the content and restore it multiple times but then eventually take it down? That's a human moderator doing that. It's also inescapable that moderators follow bias because of how different moderation is between the different spaces.

Moderating is bad, ideologically driven, and there is so much factually incorrect information on Quora to make it toxic to the general populace. It's most aptly described as a propaganda machine. People often like it because Quora is designed to get users to come back so they push content matching your ideology and likes/dislikes. It purposefully makes toxic echo chambers to maximize profit. However, if you're a user who digs deeper than their main Quora feed (I always read every single answer and comment on a question before upvoting so I never relied on Quora spoon feeding me) you'll quickly figure out how bad Quora is.

Google pushes Quora answers in its search engine and people often take Quora answers as fact. I tried working inside the Quora site to make it better but I can't do that anymore.

I genuinely hope that the site gets permanently DDOSED and all its leftist moderators die of cancer.

Once you connect, it's almost impossible to get rid of it. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Edit 5: Alot of people at Quora really tried to help out in the process eventually. So, since it's free, and I really needed that support, I guess I can update this to two more stars.
If they can solve the trolling problem on the site, and I understand the point of the site is to connect users, but it would be helpful if they could find ways that people aren't forced to interact with other users, or see their content, it would really help the site.
Edit 4: All of this, I am not assuming, they bragged about it in answers.
Edit 4: Franklin Veaux accuses women on the internet, after going to their personal accounts where they have blocked him on everything possible, cause he feels entitled to blame them for him being a complete pervert and creep stalking them on marijuana, but can't understand it is more a mystery that how HE gets any dates, at all.
Edit: I have blocked Dushka Zapata on all my accounts too. Sane women focus on their partners, they don't stalk people from across the world for 1 year. She should get in therapy for menopause and talk to her boyfriend about her guilt on cheating on her boyfriend with Franklin, and maybe she did more, I don't know. Her standards for cheating for herself is having an orgy, but for strangers she doesn't know is liking articles (irrespective of whether they are in a relationship or not). But I guess this is her relationship after couple of marriages, she feels insecure.
By now, I have zero expectations from you all. Please leave me alone. I don't care, I will not get back my time back I lost in this. Let's just move on, there are more people like you in the world. Get new hobbies.

Edit 3: I also think Franklin Veaux was a pimp or a former anal pegged worker at sex parties in that industry (he knows quite a lot of workers since 2015), and a guy who operated silk trade drug dealer in deep web (wrote a lot of answers on how to get drugs from deep web when it was illegal in his country) and a former child porn collector or child sex offender, cause he was supporting pedophiles against being registered in sex offender registeries.He is also almost homeless and earns less than a fastfood person, so clearly he might have done some illegal things to earn money. He has no degree or skills. I think he is drugs and has some addiction, finance handling problems. He thinks he looks in his mid 30s at 50s. All of this is illegal in both USA and Canada. I also think his wife loves her lover more than him, they don't have a single picture together, but she has a lot of her and her lover since 2013.

He spends his time as an internet creep nowadays stalking and harassing minority female users on Quora who have threatened restraining orders against him. He is married. He also is a pathological liar, stalker, No one I know would ever ask him out. Ever. Is he mentally ill?

I guess he is already polyamorous, but I think he only talks about the all sex positive stuff cause one, he is supported financially by the network he has, two it helps him get laid with easily manipulated women, who are somehow okay with him, I really don't know how, don't they have issues shaking hands with him, and three cause he has build a brand and his work on the lifestyle. I don't think he believes a word he is saying.

I also think since he is not earning much, he is being paid or given some help by a user Dushka Zapata to defame users on the site for the last 9 months so that she could carry out cheating on her current boyfriend by having affairs on the site. He also has issues with being called a beta male. Don't call him that, he gets offended.

Edit: So a popular Quoran Dushka Zapata and Franklin Veaux had an affair on Franklin Veaux's wedding night (or bachelor party), I don't think their spouses knew. Franklin said for a long while Dushka was his crush, and Dushka Zapata attended their wedding, on her own. I think Dushka's first wedding was for "love".
Here Franklin Veaux wrote about it, apparently, they were pegging and having oral sex. Here he hinted at it.
http://qr.ae/TUTY5A
He posted this afterward. Dushka also participates in Burning Man.
This is his crush (at that time it was Dushka and she was at his wedding)
http://qr.ae/TUTY5H

Edit 2:

Dushka wrote these after that event. I am sure it's true.
http://qr.ae/TUTH7K
http://qr.ae/TUTH7C
http://qr.ae/TUTH7o
http://qr.ae/TUTH7P

Franklin seemed highly relieved after that.
http://qr.ae/TUTH7Z

They are both twice or thrice divorced, so maybe both are polyamorous, however, I don't think their spouses knew. I also think Dushka wanted to hit on users, maybe one Irish guy, and so was targetting users based on details from her life.

They both have 100s of failed relationships. They left their partners for being eye roving philanderers or for cheating. They were falsely targetting other users for a year so that they could find romantic affairs on the Quora site. So, bit surprised to see this surface.

Good things, the feed and ability to connect to great experts. Quora is great for having a high number of sources and information about things. They may be biased, but they exist and you can work the algorithm to what you would like to read. The experts are amazing, but they are being harassed out of the site.

I hate their moderation cause lot of good writers are being banned, sometimes on hate crimes, and they do nothing about it. The questions are extremely banal and trollish.

But it is just a website. Quora competes with feedly and medium. Compared to those two it is slightly better off, but there is a lot of bad content you'd have to go through.

But then user generated content is not exactly Quora's problem.

I edited my rating from 2 to 3, since the website is free. They don't really owe you anything.

Quora's network of users is also pretty good. So that is a plus.

I think they are now kind of doing surveillance on the site.And take more than necessary information for verification, so that is also a problem. It could be just an efficient system for knowledge discovery.

But, it is currently kind of a popularity contest currently between bullies and teens. The quora moderation behaves exactly like it's algorithm. Soon you start getting harassed, stalked, users troll you and mass report you on polite and helpful answers. There is also a kind of an echo chamber over there. There are some popular users who are completely insane and get away with it, because their harassment is within the lines of bnbr, and then flag you. If you are a female, expect harassment and yes, internet stalking. Worse, if you take it to quora mods, they will report you instead. The users there are highly pretentious, and think that Quora is actually legitimate place with laws, while harassing you. Most popular quorans aren't that successful outside that website to be honest.

You get stalked by users and trolls from the website. You don't know them, but the next thing you know they start to harass you offline and damage your reputation cause you rejected them, in some way. Especially if you write on controversial subjects.

But, I have to say it is still a great place to read about world experts. If you are a fan of science and technology, quora still is a good place.