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Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

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Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#81

Post by brador »

primigenus wrote: post #68
0x0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like what they are doing are obfuscating with CSS. See for example: http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algo... The answers are in a span with class "blurred_answer", which has css styles: "color: transparent; text-shadow: 0 0 7px #777". Which in effect makes the text completely unreadable to humans. This is just one step above "color: #fff; background-color: #fff". Scummy.

Unreadable to humans with sight. Screen readers don't care! :-)

Just do "select all" (CTRL+A) to see all Quora hidden content.

Source: http://nerdr.com/see-quora-answers-without-signing-up/

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#82

Post by bornhuetter »

andrewingram wrote: post #53

Early last year, when I was starting to get into using Quora, I stopped using it abruptly when I realised how limited their privacy features are. Basically, I wanted to contribute quite heavily to the Depression topic. I'm a sufferer and I wanted to be able to help other people. But on Quora you have a choice of answering a question either Anonymously or as yourself, the problem with answering as yourself is that all…

> I felt like I couldn't make an valuable contribution if I was hiding behind anonymity each time.

Why is that?

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#83

Post by JonnieCache »

cantrevealname wrote: post #44
monsterix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Their policy to force your true_full_name is an absolute no-go for many users. A friend of mine from south India has a very lengthy name. Few parts of his name are direct reference to his ancestors and the villages they come from. Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._D._Deve_Gowda where H. D. parts of his name are references to ancestry, places etc. My friend was denied permission to use Quo…

My friend was denied permission to use Quora for not revealing his ancestor name. Could you explain how it happened in this specific case, since it sounds like the name that your friend gave appeared to be real. That it, it wasn't something like "Fake Name" or "Bite Me", so how did Quora know? And, in general, could someone explain how the likes of Quora and Facebook decide that a name isn't "real"? Does someone at Q…

>Does someone at Quora or Facebook manually scan new account names?

At facebook they certainly do. When you change your name you have to wait for some period of time before it gets approved by a human. The person doing it doesn't seem to give a shit though. It is the fashion amongst a certain sector of the youth to use utterly ludicrous pseudonyms on FB - most of my friends do. I would love to quote some of them here because they're very funny but I don't want to jeopardise anyones privacy.

Personally I have changed my name several times on FB over the years and never had a problem. For a long time it was 15 letters with no vowels. That was fun at parties - "What are you called on facebook?" "I literally can't remember. Guess I'm going to have to add you."

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#84

Post by Gring »

chrisacky wrote: post #63

If you would like try and get your account deleted, send something like this to privacy@quora.com --------------------- Please can you delete my account. I'm unhappy with your recent changes that would allow anyone to see the topics I follow and read. My registered account is set up at Please can you send me confirmation when you have done this. Many Thanks. --------------------- I've fired an email off. Re: http://w…

Since this can be turned off in the Quora preferences, you might add an explanation why this is not good enough, e.g. they subverted an expected trust of anonymity by turning a new feature on without asking first, and that defaults matter.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#85

Post by hk__2 »

chrisacky wrote: post #63

If you would like try and get your account deleted, send something like this to privacy@quora.com --------------------- Please can you delete my account. I'm unhappy with your recent changes that would allow anyone to see the topics I follow and read. My registered account is set up at Please can you send me confirmation when you have done this. Many Thanks. --------------------- I've fired an email off. Re: http://w…

Why didn't you deactivated the feature?

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#86

Post by cantrevealname »

0x0 wrote: post #69
cantrevealname wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see missing or blurred text in your example, http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algo... I checked with two different browsers (Opera and Firefox under Windows). Could this mean that the Quora PR machine is up in full swing trying to undo damage (at least in the case of specific links that people cite)?

Did you scroll all the way down? Still blurry here: http://imgur.com/Bbifs (on google chrome) Although I see in the html source there are some html comments "googleoff". I've never heard of those before. I guess "googleon"'ing the first answer is enough to get google juice while staying within the letter of rules, it's still really spammy. (Plus, how does that play with other search engines?)

Yes, you're right, I can see the blurring in certain cases now.

If I go to the link you cited directly it is not blurred.

But I if search for "How do Bayesian algorithms work" in Google, then click the link that Google finds, then it is blurred.

Once you get the blurred Quora page, then even going to the link directly will get you a blurred page. If you delete all the Quora cookies, then it'll be back to being readable (non-blurred).

Interestingly, if you use Google's encrypted service ( https://encrypted.google.com/ ) to search for "How do Bayesian algorithms work", you'll get a non-blurred Quora page.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#87

Post by aangjie »

cantrevealname wrote: post #44
monsterix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Their policy to force your true_full_name is an absolute no-go for many users. A friend of mine from south India has a very lengthy name. Few parts of his name are direct reference to his ancestors and the villages they come from. Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._D._Deve_Gowda where H. D. parts of his name are references to ancestry, places etc. My friend was denied permission to use Quo…

My friend was denied permission to use Quora for not revealing his ancestor name. Could you explain how it happened in this specific case, since it sounds like the name that your friend gave appeared to be real. That it, it wasn't something like "Fake Name" or "Bite Me", so how did Quora know? And, in general, could someone explain how the likes of Quora and Facebook decide that a name isn't "real"? Does someone at Q…

I suspect in this case, he just used initials for the last name instead of expanding it. It's a common style followed in India. For example He use Deve G. or Fred F.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#88

Post by mozan_sykol »

samstave wrote: post #9

Quora is in the same boat as FB (and to a certain extent, Twitter) They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary. A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history. I will delete me Quora account. So far I have gotten little value from it. Time for it to have no data on me. Deactivated! Edit: I followed…

>>They think that the experience of their largely 20-something staff is anything short of revolutionary.

>>A bunch of kids running a digital media company with questionable morals and no connection to digital history.

I cannot comment on the morals but same thing applies to a lot of YCombinator companies - where the product is complete trash, gains traction just because they allow you to do something 'social', used by the cool kids because apparently they are developed in Lisp (or similar 'cool' languages) and is built to be sold. Most of them are bought by large companies where the decision makers are equally foolish.

I am huge fan of Quora, primarily because it allows opinions. In technology, often a best answer is an opinion, recommendation and comparison between things - something which Stackoverflow discourages. I have found a lot of value in reading answers in Quora and this just a small price to pay.

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#89

Post by Lewton »

JonnieCache wrote: post #83
cantrevealname wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend was denied permission to use Quora for not revealing his ancestor name. Could you explain how it happened in this specific case, since it sounds like the name that your friend gave appeared to be real. That it, it wasn't something like "Fake Name" or "Bite Me", so how did Quora know? And, in general, could someone explain how the likes of Quora and Facebook decide that a name isn't "real"? Does someone at Q…

>Does someone at Quora or Facebook manually scan new account names? At facebook they certainly do. When you change your name you have to wait for some period of time before it gets approved by a human. The person doing it doesn't seem to give a shit though. It is the fashion amongst a certain sector of the youth to use utterly ludicrous pseudonyms on FB - most of my friends do. I would love to quote some of them here…

I suspect the wait time for changing names on facebook are there to give the illusion that a real human looks at it.

AFAIK if you try to change your name to something obviously fake, like "Superman", it will reject it immediately

Re: Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

#90

Post by krelian »

I was curious so I just had a look with my (fake name) account and the option called "Allow others to see what content I've viewed in feed" was set at "No". I don't recall ever playing with that setting so this may be a recent change on their part to avoid the backlash.
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