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OPINION PIECE
The Not-So-Great Library of Alexandria: Quora’s Descent into Digital Chaos
Remember when Quora was supposed to be the “Facebook of knowledge sharing”? Those were the days. Back in 2010, Silicon Valley’s brightest minds heralded it as the future of online learning — a modern-day Library of Alexandria where experts would freely share their wisdom. Fast forward to 2024, and what we got instead feels more like a digital landfill with a particularly aggressive email marketing strategy.
The platform’s decline reads like a cautionary tale of Silicon Valley hubris. Founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo, Quora raised over $450 million in funding and achieved unicorn status. Yet somehow, despite all that capital and supposed tech expertise, they’ve managed to create what might be the internet’s most sophisticated spam delivery system.
Want to unsubscribe from their relentless email digests? Good luck. Users report having to perform what amounts to a digital obstacle course — clicking unsubscribe and frantically closing their browser before the site automatically logs them back in. It’s the kind of dark pattern that would make even the most shameless growth hackers blush.
But the real tragedy lies in Quora’s content moderation — or rather, its spectacular lack thereof. The site has become a…
