[vineyardmike]

This story is really interesting for all the not-specific-to-quora parts. It’s pretty obvious that quora has a strange culture of know-it-alls trying to show off, but this AI product makes it clear that the act of showing off is the product. The answers are garbage and they obviously don’t care. The key action for sale is not finding an answer, but writing it.

What’s really interesting is that Quora product team decided they wanted to juice engagement with fake AI created posts, and real humans are complying to answer them. Questions that make no sense, and no human asked. Quora is proving (again) that people will engage in parasocial behavior with LLMs. We’ve seen AI girlfriends and companions, we’ve seen tutors, and knowledge assistants. This is the opportunity to brag - artificial students (likely cut from the same API as those tutors).

I can only assume that question-answering-users are the real market they advertise to, profitably. This would imply that this strategy is profitable or could be profitable for them. The nice thing about this compared to more personalized LLM companions like AI girlfriends is that the inference costs can be distributed across all users by sharing the questions. I would posit that there exists an opportunity to make a Twitter or Reddit clone that explicitly intermixed bots. Maybe even exclusively bots. People want to talk on the internet and told they’re special. The interaction doesn’t need to be organic.

For proof, look at all the top-level comments on this HN post with no engagement, by users who have repeated the same pattern discussed about quora.

[utensil4778]

I'm really amused by the concept of Quota becoming a site specifically and exclusively for question-answerers. Question-askers need not apply.

Where do the questions come from? Best not to ask.

[jfengel]

Quora knows that it's about attracting people to write answers, more than people with questions. They've had a number of tactics to get more questions so that people could write answers.

At one point, they paid people to do it -- which went about as well as you would expect. Users complained like crazy and it lasted long, long after it was an obvious failure.

Their idea wasn't completely insane. There are questions that people ask Google that they'd never ask a human. Stupid questions that people will nonetheless answer. And Quora wanted to be the place that Google directed them. Combined with a high reputation from its early days, it was well placed in SEO.

They never figured out how to turn that into money, and they've floundered about. They managed to have a bunch of smart people wanting to show off -- actually giving meaningful answers -- and they squandered it.

[johnnyanmac]

>look at all the top-level comments on this HN post with no engagement, by users who have repeated the same pattern discussed about quora.

So responding to a post but not getting responses is the same as responding to slop with a financial incentive? I'm not sure I fully follow.

I only very slightly agree in the fact that I rarely make top level comments unless I feel I have something unique to share. And I know that's not necessarily a common enough sentiment (lest, very few people would make top level comments). But given how I usually check the front page or active, my retort 99% of the time is already posted elsewhere. Half the time it already has responses too. So most of my activity is more responding to other comments to try and start a discussion.

And ultimately that is my goal in a forum: 1) ask about and understand others' experiences and 2) try to share my own experinces where appropriate. I have my share of https://xkcd.com/386/ as well, so I'm not perfect in regards to "hearing myself speak" or falling for the occasional flamebait. But I'd like to think that most of my engagement no forums like this passes a few basic tests:

- does this comment contribute to the conversation? - do I have a goal in mind with my comment? (e.g. if I'm asking a question, am I asking that user? Do I hope anyone at all chimes in with an answer? If I'm sharing a story, does this story hold potential value and lessons for the community?) - Is the comment civil? Can I make this comment without involving the person (unless the person is the goal)?

[vineyardmike]

> So responding to a post but not getting responses is the same as responding to slop with a financial incentive? I'm not sure I fully follow

HN doesn’t have financial (?) incentives (but does Quora?). The point was mostly about the quality of content, the type of content, etc. I don’t mean to criticize anyone, I think it’s human behavior.

The root question of my claim is: When you create a (top-level or other) comment, how do you measure if it “contributes to the conversation”?

Most comments probably have zero engagement, while the top few comments drive the conversation. Part of that is the UI driving people towards the top. My claim is that most commenters, just like most quora users, are answering out of their own need to speak. I think the XKCD link describes the behavior well - and my claim is that it also includes sharing personal anecdotes and opinions and similar, not just “correcting misinformation”.

I have my own share of comments with no upvotes and no replies, which I can only assume means no one found it to contribute. I mean no disrespect towards others in similar positions. But does its presence in the database for casual passersby’s mean anything despite that? Despite the goals and intentions, does it matter? Should it just be routed to dev/null to silently fill my desire to speak? Should an LLM just entertain me with artificial conversation for entertainment?

[weinzierl]

"I would posit that there exists an opportunity to make a Twitter or Reddit clone that explicitly intermixed bots. Maybe even exclusively bots."

To that I posit that Twitter and Reddit will morph into what you described. Maybe it already happened.

[vineyardmike]

> … will morph into what you described. Maybe it already happened.

I can only assume that this is one of several reasons why the world’s largest social media company is on the cutting edge of LLM research.

[johnnyanmac]

Sounds like a great start towards an ad diaspora. Who wants to advertise on a site that cannot properly distiguish between a human and a bot?

[vineyardmike]

The opportunity is for the site to become the bots, and silo each user to their fake world of LLM posts tuned for them to engage with. It’s a site with of perfect knowledge of bots, which would be a perfect advertisement environment.