What made Quora change its mind?

Note: This article is the first in a four-part series on my Quora experience having my account deleted, and some reflections on how social media should or should not moderate and spread certain content. The posts are:

1. What made Quora change its mind?, about what might have led to my account deletion. (This post.)
2. In Which Leonard Processes His Feelings. (About my own journey having had my writing removed.)
3. The impact of speech for pedophiles, on how limits on our speech impacts us and society. (In progress.)
4. Lessons for discourse, on how we should think about speech and the obligation or not) to share it. (In progress.)

If you haven’t read the first post, I highly recommend doing so before this one.

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A few weeks ago, I had one of my answers deleted from Quora, a popular internet question-and-answer social media site.

I’ve been writing answers on Quora about pedophilia for over six years, with over 1,000,000 views on the 141 questions I’ve answered. (As of when I last checked, the total views were 1,057,829.) This is one of the things I’m most proud of; I feel like I’ve really made the world a better place by writing on Quora, and I’ve managed to get visibility for important topics where they’ve otherwise been shut down.

My writing led to conversations with pedophiles struggling with who they are and how to live their lives; people suffering from POCD seeking some assurance that they’re not pedophiles; and survivors of child abuse who seek better ways to prevent what happened to them. Maybe my proudest moments have been the people who came into my posts hostile to pedophiles, and left less hostile; those people with whom I had productive conversations, who acknowledged that yes, perhaps treatment and support is better than silencing and isolation.

All of which is to say: Quora had been really good to me. Their site policies seemed geared towards preventing abusive content without limiting free speech. In fact, people would sometimes be abusive in comments on my posts, suggesting that I should be dead or just using lots of profanity. By the time I clicked the link in the notification e-mail to see the comment and reply to it, they were almost always deleted. Quora moderation was shielding me from online abuse, which frankly felt luxurious compared to what I would typically expect.

So it was quite painful when my post was deleted. I remember intellectually telling myself, “this was to be expected,” but somehow that didn’t make it easier. I looked at the post again and again, and I just couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Yet Quora claimed that I had violated their policies. I’d never felt powerless in this way; never felt like I had done something good and useful and it had just been rejected. Clearly some people had reported it, and Quora decided they were more powerful than I was.

At that point, I downloaded all of my content, which was fortunate. Nine days later, my entire Quora, with all of its answers, views, upvotes, and comments, was simply deleted. “Banned,” actually.

I’ve been struggling to understand my own emotions about what happened, and I still don’t think I have them down.

This post explores the mystery: What exactly happened? Why was the account deleted, and why now? There will also be three follow-up posts. The second post will share my personal journey, as I process how I feel about having my work deleted and try to understand my emotions. The third and fourth will be broader explorations, first of the impact that public perception and silencing has on pedophiles and in turn on society, and then on what the ideal information ecosystem might look like.

I’m honestly not used to feeling powerless about things in my life, so I do have broader ambitions for this post. I hope it documents what happened so that others know what being banned looks like. I also hope it might open up a discussion about what took place. I’m not sure we know what kind of discussion spaces, if any, we should have for topics like this.

The facts of the case

I wrote the answer that got deleted on September 19, 2018. At the time of its deletion, on October 12, 2022, it had been up for over four years, with over 25,000 views, 91 upvotes, and dozens of comments. (That’s not a lot of upvotes, which I think is because who upvotes a question is public, so posts about pedophilia get fewer upvotes than other content.) I don’t know what happened that caused the Quora moderators to decide now that it was worth removing; surely, over the course of those four years, it would have been reported many times. (I imagine any answer that takes an approach to pedophilia as I do gets reported.)

The question I was answering was “What causes a person to be attracted to minors?” Here is my answer, in full:

What causes a person to be attracted to minors?

I wish I knew.

I first realized I was attracted to kids around the age of 13. I’ve never been abused. I grew up in a supportive family, well fed my entire life, bullied but not too bad, successful in school. I’m well-adjusted, have lots of friends, and have fended off my share of crushes from women.

You see, unfortunately, I’m exclusive, which means I’m only attracted to pre-pubescent kids.

I’m not a monster. I’ve never hurt a kid, and I never will. That’s the thing; people who abuse kids have something more going on than just attraction (and often, they’re not even attracted to kids). There’s some fundamental not caring, or at least the ability to pretend it doesn’t hurt the kids.

But my point is that there’s no sign in my background that I should be the way I am. I meet none of the stereotypes, and other pedophiles I’ve talked to are all over the place. There are no obvious patterns.

And yet I am attracted to kids. If you ask me why… my answer will be the same as anyone else’s, except it will be about kids. Ask a guy what he finds attractive in a woman, and he’s likely to talk about her legs, her face, her body proportions, her sexual areas. It’s the same for me, except it’s about young boys. I don’t know why I’m wired like that, but I am.

That’s maybe the hardest thing for others to grasp. As far as I can tell, my attraction feels like anyone else’s attraction. I might see a boy and think he’s attractive, or beautiful, or plain, or not my type. Just like someone else will. I realize how ridiculous and awful and maybe triggering this sounds, but ask me about the right boy and I might think to myself, “he’s hot.”

My point being: as far as I can tell, my attraction is the same as anyone else’s but wired to a different target. How that happened and why, I don’t know. But it’s the only difference I can think of, so if you’re going to look somewhere, that’s where you should look.

Not easy reading for many people, but I feel quite confident in saying that I was in no way advocating for or describing child abuse.

On October 12th, I received an e-mail from Quora, subject line “Your answer has been deleted:”

Your answer has been deleted as it was found to be in violation of our Sexual exploitation and abuse policy. To learn more about Quora’s policy, click here. If you think this is an error, you can appeal here.

The policy the e-mail points me to is this one. The relevant portion of it is:

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Children and Minors

Sexually explicit or suggestive content (written or visual) involving children and minors. If child sexual abuse material is identified to us, we will remove it, report it to relevant authorities, and your account will be permanently banned.

Examples include:

• Sexually explicit or suggestive content involving children and minors (this can include content involving minors who are fully clothed and not engaged in overtly sexual acts)
• Descriptions, whether real or fantasy, of engaging in sexual interactions with children and minors
• Soliciting or exchanging sexually explicit or suggestive images involving children and minors, or Spaces dedicated to such behavior
• Sending or requesting sexually explicit media to or from a child or minor
• Content describing different ways to coerce children and minors into sexual interactions
• Advocating for or glorifying minor – non-minor relations
• Sharing of external links to content that would violate this policy
• Sharing sexually explicit content in Spaces that are directed towards minors (ages 13-17)
• Grooming behavior, such as an adult attempting to engage in sexually explicit conversations with a minor on or off the platform

Advocacy against illegal or harmful activity involving children or minors is not a violation of this policy provided there is no sharing of, or linking to any material featuring child sexual exploitation.

Reporting – Please Speak Up: If you think you’ve found a Quora account distributing or promoting sexually explicit or suggestive content involving children and minors, please report it to us using the in-product reporting tools. Please provide the username and links to all relevant content that led you to believe the account should be reviewed.

I’ve read my answer, and the policy, many times. I honestly cannot understand what the violation is. Was saying that I think to myself that a child is “hot” “sexually explicit or suggestive content?” I can’t see it, but that’s the best I can find. It was a deliberate writing choice, included because I wanted to make my attraction visceral to the reader, for them to understand just what it really meant to think like that.

I’d like to pause here to actually talk about how good Quora used to be here. This is an extremely reasonable policy, one I wholeheartedly agree with. Twitter doesn’t even allow discussion of pedophilia as an identity or sexual orientation, which is genuinely cutting off whole avenues of scientific discussion. There’s a reason I decided to write on Quora: I believe that it is a good platform, with thoughtful users, reasonable policies, and much less hate than elsewhere.

Naturally, I appealed the decision. I wrote to them:

Greetings,

My answer to the question “What causes a person to be attracted to minors?” was deleted for being in violation of the “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” policy. I wrote my answer very carefully, and I do not believe it was in violation of this policy.

The question asks for the causes for attraction to people under 18. Throughout the post, it was clear that it was advocating against child abuse, and focused on describing the origins of such attractions. It contained no sexually explicit nor suggestive material. It did not describe any descriptions (real or fantasy) of sexual interactions with minors. No minors were involved. There were no images. It did not glory minor / non-minor interactions. As far as I can tell, there was no violation of Quora’s policies, merely a direct answer of the question. Prior to deletion, it had 91 upvotes.

I really do appreciate how hard this topic is to moderate, and how sometimes positive contributions can be seen as problematic. There are a lot of bad actors out there, and there are a lot of people pushing inappropriate agendas. I’ve seen the same sometimes in the comments on my answers and in other answers on similar topics. However, I really am not one of the bad actors.

If you read through the post again, you’ll see that I am sharing a personal experience in a calm and professional way meant to inform and add to the conversation. I believe this kind of content is genuinely important, and my content has been consistently read and appreciated on Quora, where I’ve never had an answer deleted before (with well over 1 million views, thousands of upvotes, and many people who’ve contacted me through comments or private messages to indicate how the posts positive impacted them).

I hope that the post can be restored. If there is any element that is somehow in violation of Quora’s policies (although I cannot see what it might be), I would appreciate some guidance on how to avoid that in the future.

Thank you so much for your attention. I really appreciate it, and the work that goes into this.

Let me take another moment to say that there are things Quora did right here. I thought there was every chance this appeal would go into a void from which I’d never get a reply. Instead, I got an answer in less than 24 hours which is remarkable, and it was a reply from a real human. (Perhaps a form letter, but it at least had a name attached.) Unfortunately, it was not the reply I’d hoped for:

Hello Leonard,

Thank you for writing in.

Your answer was in violation of our Platform policies, specifically “Sexual exploitation and abuse policy”. To learn more, please review our help center article to understand how we enforce this policy: https://help.quora.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000470706-Platform-Policies.

At this time our decision is final, and we will not be able to reinstate your content.

If you see content that is objectionable, we suggest you either report or downvote it. You can report questions, answers, comments, and messages by clicking on the “Report” link which is located underneath the content.

We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,

[name]
User Support
Quora

There was, at least, an option to reply back to this person. Taking note that the decision was final, I decided to take a proactive approach, hoping to be able to continue writing on Quora (and to salvage any of my remaining 140 answers).

Dear [name],

Thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate it, and I understand that the decision is final.

I have been writing for Quora for over six years, with over a million views on my answers. I’ve never had any rules violation in all that time, and I’d really like to avoid it happening again. I’d like to write content that Quora considers appropriate and that other readers will continue to find useful. However, I’ve read the policies that you linked many times, and I’m not able to understand what policy I violated. Would it be possible for you to provide any more detail about what the violation was? Otherwise, I don’t know how to avoid this happening again; I’m just in the dark about what happened.

Thank you so much for your time. Again, I really, really appreciate it.

All the best,
~Leonard

Unfortunately, I did not get a reply. Instead, nine days later, the entire account was deleted. “Banned,” the first time I’ve been banned from anywhere, in this identity or my “real life” one. I don’t know why. Did my reply trigger it? Did the Quora moderation team decide to look more broadly at my account? But surely my account had already been reported many times… I don’t understand what happened.

Anyway, the account deletion message was delivered with an e-mail as well:

Quora Moderation banned you from Quora for this reason:

Your account has been banned because it has been linked to multiple violations of Quora’s Platform policy. To learn more about our Platform policy, please click here.

If you think this ban was made in error, you can appeal this decision here.

I knew, of course, that appealing was almost certainly futile. In fact, maybe it was my previous appeal that led them to focus more on the account. Nonetheless, at this point there was no harm in it, so I tried my best. By now I realized just how much my Quora account meant to me, and how much it meant to be able to support people that way. Here’s what I wrote:

Hello,

For the past six years, I’ve been posting regularly on Quora. In that time, I’ve had over a million views and over four thousand upvotes. I’ve cited research and shared personal experiences with care. My posts led to outreach from a reporter as well as to two conversations with researchers. I’ve been professional and courteous to everyone I’ve replied to, whether in comments or private messages.

Today, my account was banned for “multiple violations of Quora’s Platform policy.”

I didn’t violate Quora’s Platform policy. I’ve read through it multiple times, and considered carefully all of my actions on the platform. As far as I can tell, I am being banned because I discussed the existence of sexual attraction to children, and I shared that I am sexually attracted to children. All of my content discussed how to deal with this attraction productively. It emphasized that I never act on those desires, and that no one should, and that doing so harms children. It gave advice for people to avoid harming children. It never shared any sexual content nor did it link to any. I’m confident that virtually any researcher in the field of pedophilia would say that my responses were appropriate and within the bounds of current research, and if it would help I could likely get letters of support!

It feels crude to say this, but this is not a ban based on content or policies, at least as far as I can tell. This is a ban based on my sexual attractions.

Given the positive reception my content has generally received, I assume that a group of people organized to report my writing all at once. (I am told this happens on platforms like Twitter, which I avoid.) I would hope that you will read through my content and see that there were no violations, or at least to describe to me what I did to actually violate Quora’s policies.

Again, I urge you to actually read through and see if there is anywhere that I violated any Quora policies. I genuinely want to know; if you could share even one example, I would appreciate that.

Beyond that, I hope you also put this decision in a larger context. I’ve always had a vision of Quora as dedicated to providing useful information that helps people. Every day, kids who are 13, 14 years old wake up and realize they’re attracted to pre-pubescent kids. They’re kids themselves, and now they have to decide how to deal with it.

What many of them do is that they search online. Because of that online search, a lot of them end up viewing child pornography or falling in with people who encourage them to commit abuse.

For the past six years, my writing has been a way for them to find better role models and a better path forward. It has helped people to stay away from viewing child porn, and it has helped people to find a better way through life. Banning my account means that it’s no longer a resource for people to deal with their attractions. It means that when kids try to figure out how people deal with that attraction, more of what they find is going to recommend immoral and criminal acts.

Banning exactly the account that promotes positive behavior has consequences. And while I don’t want to be overly dramatic, I genuinely believe that by removing discussions about how to live safe lives, you are leading more people to satisfy their urges by viewing child pornography or even abusing younger children. I just don’t know any other way to say it. This decision is not responsible, and it goes against exactly what I thought Quora was for. It puts kids in danger because it takes away important and healthy resources.

Although I realize how unlikely it is, I hope you reconsider. It’s important.

Thank you for your time.

And that, of course, led to the decision being finalized. This time it was three days to the reply:

Hi Leonard,

Thank you for writing regarding the ban on your account.

Quora believes that all members of the community should make an effort to contribute helpful content to the community and, ultimately, make the site a better resource for all.

The following are some of the reasons for which we will ban an account:

• Posting the same content repeatedly or posting irrelevant answers/comments for the purpose of driving traffic to an external site or for monetary gain.
• Repeatedly editing someone’s questions or reverting someone’s edits when the content is policy compliant.
• Posting content or engaging in behaviors with the intent to harass or humiliate an individual, whether in public or private. This includes encouraging others to engage in such behavior.
• Repeatedly violating Quora’s Platform policies and/or not changing behavior after receiving a warning.
• Using multiple accounts to evade moderation or other types of deceptive activity.
• Being linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity.
• Email domain is linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity.

To learn more about our Platform Policies, please see: https://help.quora.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000470706-Platform-Policies, and for our Acceptable Use Policy, please see: https://www.quora.com/about/acceptable_use

After reviewing your activity on Quora, we can confirm that your account was banned due to repeatedly violating Quora’s Platform policies and/or not changing behavior after receiving a warning.

Unfortunately, the ban on your account will not be overturned. This decision is final, and you will no longer be able to use Quora.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

Sincerely,

[a different name]
User Support
Quora

I wrote back, of course, just to try to get a reason. But I don’t expect to ever receive a response.

Hi [different name],

Thank you for your reply.

I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am disappointed. I neither violated the Platform Policies nor did I receive a warning. (Although I did have an answer removed a couple of weeks prior – suddenly, and after it had been posted for four years and amassed 25,000 views – after that answer was removed, I took no further actions on Quora while awaiting more guidance on appropriate behavior. I have never received any other negative response from Quora and was even invited to be a top writer at one point, which I turned down out of concern over the topic.) To be direct, your e-mail is a form letter with nothing specific, which makes sense since as far as I am able to tell, there has been absolutely no violation.

If you are able to provide any specific guidance at all as to what took place that violated a policy, I would greatly appreciate it. It is hard to get closure on so much work, and so many positive exchanges and help provided to other people, with this form reply.
~Leonard

So, there you have it. All of my communication with Quora on the topic. I suppose that from there, you can draw your own conclusions.

Should Quora ever reply further, I will update this post either at the bottom or in the comments.

So, what actually happened? Why now?

I wish I knew, but I can speculate.

A lot of content moderation on large sites is automated. Any particular piece of content might be reviewed by a human or just processed by a computer algorithm; the details or moderation processes are usually not shared publicly.

One consequence of the automation is that if a large number of people click the “report” button for particular content, then it’s much more likely to be acted upon; a lone report or two won’t ever rise to a top priority, unless something else in the post triggers a review. This leads to a perverse system where people will team up together into roving bands to report content all at once, breaking through the algorithms with intentional action.

That content reporting strategy happens in debates between different political views, where people on one extreme or the other try to report the other content as offensive. There are also groups out there dedicated to hunting pedophiles, and sometimes the way they choose to do so is by reporting their online content. So one possibility is that a group of people got together and decided to report me all at once.

I’ve tried to research this a bit. Sometimes these groups post their targets publicly, so I’ve been searching for my Quora name with “Quora” or “pedophile” attached. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything. (I have, at least once, been on a list of “targeted” pedophiles, although that was years ago and nothing ever came of it.)

It’s also possible that somehow the first deleted answer rose organically into Quora’s moderation queue, without any intentional effort. Perhaps after that, the initial investigation or even my appeal led to the moderation team reviewing my whole account.

Another possibility is changes within Quora. In August of 2021, they began allowing users to monetize their content and having premium subscriptions. They’ve also been raising new rounds of venture funding, and maybe are preparing to go public. Perhaps they just don’t want anything about pedophilia, no matter how useful or valid, to be included alongside other content that is being monetized.

Then there’s the possibility that their moderation team or processes have changed. It could be that there is less oversight of moderation decisions. In fact, Wikipedia has… what I can best describe as a “salty” paragraph that really should have a citation needed tag:

Quora supports various features to moderate content posted by users. Quora relies on user reporting, and sometimes human moderators, although many complain that most of the more recent moderation actually comes from AI “bots” looking for specific keywords in order to flag content, without human beings doing as much supervision as was done when the site was newer and the membership was smaller and more manageable. Many members, and former members whose numbers are rapidly growing, complain that in its current state, there is little logic behind moderation decisions, with racism, misogyny, and hate speech routinely allowed, while legitimate content is deleted if it is reported by those who disagree with said content. Many point to large-scale personnel layoffs as the reason that moderation by AI is often random and illogical, with appeals often ignored.

Someone’s angry, anyway! An online search certainly turns up lots of substantive critiques of Quora’s moderation, although it’s hard for me to tell how well founded they are compared to the problems all tech companies face moderating content. (I am not linking the critiques because I can’t personally vet them.)

So… happenstance that my content was moderated now? A coordinated effort of reporting? A change in moderation policies? A change in business priorities? Unfortunately, it seems impossible to tell.

Where to go from here?

Users of websites simply have very little power in situations like these. I have even less power than most: my need to maintain anonymity means that I can’t pursue some avenues to understand what had happened and why. Unfortunately, I may just have to live with this mystery.

It’s tempting to think this is just an accident of moderation. Given the complaints online about the poor quality of Quora’s moderation, it certainly seems plausible that an overworked moderation team defaults to “delete.” However, the entire account was banned without warning, and that indicates some greater intentionality. Some human reviewed it, and decided, “not here.” Perhaps it was user reports; perhaps it is simply that Quora just doesn’t want my views on their platform. Or maybe, seeing that they got one post removed, the mob did a broader report of all my content.

Whatever it is, it puts me into a difficult position. Having an audience for what I write is important; what I wrote in my appeals about its importance is something I truly believe. But it’s very hard to gather an audience! It turns out that Quora’s algorithms for sharing content are actually important for getting out minority views.

Think about it this way. Who will actually be willing to share content about pedophilia with their friends, or on their social media? Virtually no one. The advantage of algorithms like Quora’s is that they can promote content even if no one is personally willing to share it further. They know what people read and are interested in, even when people can’t say it out loud. Without that avenue, I don’t know how anyone will find my content. And I think that my content is important for many people.

(Unfortunately, those algorithms are also effective at getting out extreme views that can be toxic in society. I am not trying to comment here about the overall goodness of the algorithms, but rather how they are useful in my particular case.)

Which leaves me in a very hard position, one I will try to process over the next two posts in this series. For now, though, it’s back to the drawing board for me. As it so often is for people in this position.

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Note: This article is the first in a four-part series on my Quora experience having my account deleted, and some reflections on how social media should or should not moderate and spread certain content. The posts are:

1. What made Quora change its mind? (This post, about what might have led to my account deletion.)
2. What silencing feels like, about my own journey having had my writing removed.
3. The impact of speech for pedophiles, on how limits on our speech impacts us and society.
4. Lessons for discourse, on how we should think about speech and the obligation or not) to share it