I believe Quora is taking the Facebookian view of going overboard with privacy issues, then pulling back iff users revolt. It is, technically, the best way to push social interactions as far as possible, especially if you are not punished for temporary lapses in judgement.
Users WILL NOT actually punish Quora for stunts like this, so, from the company's perspective, it's a good bet, temporary bad press notwithstanding.
I remember successfully arguing down a similar bad privacy decision at another well-known company I once worked for. It took a treatise on social software, including multiple citations of other social snafus, the painstaking gathering of stakeholder acceptance, and a near-fanatical perseverance to stymie a feature that was absolute poison to our privacy model. The guys at the top were happy to launch-and-see. I suspect that's what's going on here.
tl;dr - For this to get out at all, either Quora's process is broken, or their strategy is to overshare and pull back only when necessary.
Why do you say "WILL NOT" in such a definitive way? It doesn't seem like a good bet as a company to rely on your users and the public to forgive you when you step too far, especially if you do it repeatedly.
I have already requested that Quora delete my account via email (which they did).
I might not represent the majority, I am not sure. But I think that it is wrong to say that users will not punish them.
People are becoming more jaded with each incident (regardless of which company) and becoming less tolerant of these antics. Eventually people will reach their breaking point.
Or it just might be that I am getting old and crotchety. Get off my lawn!
In my opinion it's more of a bad sign that they are so desperate and not focused on generating passionate users who are gaining some inherent value within the system itself. I don't have any hard evidence but anecdotally I can say I know perhaps 100 people in my life who love Stack Overflow but I know nobody who really loves Quora. Personally I think they are blowing it due to impatience.
I completely agree that in the current age of digital social products, and I hate the fact that I can't come up with a way to make this bullshit end.
I find companies' recent behavior of this kind (FB, Quora, and was it Path?) to be revolting, yet I feel powerless to stop them from partaking in this vulgar behavior.
Some users will. I asked Quora to delete my account today over this issue. I'm just one person, and many of those who are angry and hurt care about the service, so they feel betrayed (rightly).
The bigger problem for them is that most people aren't logging in anymore I'd bet. I doubt the people who are asking for their accounts to be deleted (myself included) were active users very recently anyway.
Or the Facebookian view of pretending to pull back, but not really. Pushing forward too far, then pulling back somewhat, gaining all that they wanted to begin with.
Users WILL NOT actually punish Quora for stunts like this, so, from the company's perspective, it's a good bet, temporary bad press notwithstanding.
I remember successfully arguing down a similar bad privacy decision at another well-known company I once worked for. It took a treatise on social software, including multiple citations of other social snafus, the painstaking gathering of stakeholder acceptance, and a near-fanatical perseverance to stymie a feature that was absolute poison to our privacy model. The guys at the top were happy to launch-and-see. I suspect that's what's going on here.
tl;dr - For this to get out at all, either Quora's process is broken, or their strategy is to overshare and pull back only when necessary.