Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguably, prelon Twitter was not-for-profit.
Post Elon, they are not-turning-a-profit.
Are their losses greater or less than pre purchase. I know revenue is down, but I wonder how the cost cuts affected margin.
How Quora died
251–260 of 427 posts
Re: How Quora died
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not here to defend Quora, but my speculation is that Google's preference for long-form content is equally to blame. Basically the same reason as recipes that start with a long life story: Google prefers pages with lots of content, even if 10% of it is actually useful to anyone. So a page with 50+ "answers" is preferable to a page with two actual answers.
> Google prefers pages with lots of content And that’s how Google search will be overtaken by GPT with ease. People want answers, not an ad-driven algorithm’s desire for content that is long enough to support more ads.
> And that’s how Google search will be overtaken by GPT with ease.
Yes if the LLMs are designed to give you the best results. Right now, it’s a honey moon phase for consumers, when there’s a fierce competitive race. But just like any other tech its deployment and realization is governed by incentives. If we get an entrenched LLM monopolist I don’t think it’ll be any different from a search monopolist. Perhaps worse.
Re: How Quora died
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
He’s right, people who always talk about they don’t use sites that require Javacript adds about as much to the conversation as people who show up in television conversations and say “I haven’t owned a television in 20 years, do people still watch TV?”
If we stick with that analogy, then since HN requires no Javascript, it's more like we're having a discussion on a radio show, and I am saying "I don't really watch much TV", no? What I hear is that Javascript is a means of speed and power to you. And for you, forgoing that power would serve no useful purpose. Do I understand that correctly? What I am wondering is, do you think that for other people, they should, may…
Well, how many people do you really think disable JavaScript and want to browse the web over Tor?
Re: How Quora died
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not running JavaScript in 2024 is like putting a speed governor on your own car that limits you to going 35 miles an hour. It serves no useful purpose
> It serves no useful purpose No useful purpose to who?
What purpose do you have for removing functionality that has been part of the web since the 90s?
Re: How Quora died
#255When I visit Quora, mainly through it being a result for something I've searched for on Google, I can never quite understand what's the question, the answer, and what's an answer to something completely different. So I've never felt compelled to stay or join myself. Also, for a while I just hit a login wall, which of course makes you not click a link there the next time.
Reddit is the same way if you don't go to old.reddit.com. You see that there are N comments, but you only get to read the first few, and suddenly you're looking at an entirely different post. Every time I accidentally go there I get confused by it. There is no chance anybody asked for this, it's so stupid it had to come out of perversely chasing some metric.
That behaviour is complete madness. And old.reddit has pretty much the perfect interface for computer usage anyway. Why they won't just label it "desktop style" and call it a day is beyond me.
Re: How Quora died
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can 100% guarantees you that Quora didn’t die because of people who didn’t want to run JavaScript or be able to access it over Tor.
It's not completely unrelated I think. It's hard to me to see how a site with a vision like Quora (had) can continue existing for long after they start ignoring accessibility issues. Sounds like I should be looking for a Stack Overflow alternative too. (I'm suspecting that this might be related to the recent issue of better accessibility also making it easier to abuse for neural network based abusers, and it certainl…
> Sounds like I should be looking for a Stack Overflow alternative too.
SO went to hell when they started demanding ready to copy paste answers instead of 'teach the man how to fish' answers.
Re: How Quora died
#257There are some interesting answers on quora. But so many stupid questions posted by trolls. The signal to noise ratio seems to drop every month.
Re: How Quora died
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Post Elon, they are not-turning-a-profit.
Are their losses greater or less than pre purchase. I know revenue is down, but I wonder how the cost cuts affected margin.
They made a profit in 2018 and 2019 ($1.2bn and $1.45bn according to SEC filings) but not in any other year.
Re: How Quora died
#259I was an active contributor to Quora in the mid-10's -- my answers gained some 3m views. It was really something back then, as many people have fondly reminisced about the era. There were so many great writers who brought so much understanding to whatever crazy stuff they were passionate about by writing for free on Quora. You had diplomats, chefs, former propaganda writers, people living through violent conflict, do…
StackOverflow has the same problem, prioritizing question askers instead of answerers.
As a result, the site is now "welcoming" to new users asking low-quality questions, but actively hostile to what the answerers and mods would like. While they're the ones left to clean up the spam.
And when the low-effort questions are closed that then drives away the question askers too, because all the "nice" onboarding didn't tell them their question should actually be well-researched. Their expectations of getting help now clash with reality and they end up hating the experience.
But all this drives views and "questions" in the short-term and management is so clueless it's hopeless. See e.g. the recent mod strike due to the AI policy issues, where they initially wanted to prevent/ban mods from deleting low-quality AI content from serial ChatGPT spammers.
Re: How Quora died
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Richard is most concerned about injustices toward people that take away their freedoms. I am most concerned about the security of people and how software makes them insecure in order to profit from, or abuse them. These are proximate but different. It is a bit worrying that both freedom and security are thought 'fanatical' by some.
> It is a bit worrying that both freedom and security are thought 'fanatical' by some. Because those are your grandpa's and your dad's causes, respectively. The operative word for this generation is "consent." Manipulate someone into giving Consent and you can do whatever the hell you want to them. They asked for and agreed to the abuse! It all starts with clicking "I accept." My skin crawls anytime I see someone bri…
> It all starts with clicking "I accept."
You don't have to click 'I accept'. If the dialog is too complex to figure out what you're accepting, click reject or close the page.
If there is no obvious reject (even if there is a hidden one) just close the page and never come back.