I don't understand why you bothered arguing with them instead, I dunno, creating a new fake account?

Instead, I created a new email ID, gave a fake name, and registered with that. I gave up on the site soon anyway, but now I'm glad they forced me into registering with fake details.

Just search for anything like "what is an open source alternative to X" and the results will be a lot of people trying to justify why their Y paid option is a good solution for your problem.

It seems to be popular with scammers and they have taken over.

These days the growth has masked all the good stuff with a layer of spam and general crap that’s hard to get past. Inevitable consequence of growing users but it has been managed poorly.

starts removing module cards

The state of personal data regulation in the US is abysmal. Unfortunately, if Cambridge Analytica wasn't enough to spur new regulation, I fear nothing will.

Right now there is relatively little liability in gathering personal data about customers but huge benefits to doing so. I believe that there should be regulation governing punishments and protections for consumers whose data may be compromised or mishandled by corporate entities.

As it stands right now a company can leak personal data from their customers and face very few consequences. Rather, the negative consequences of customer data leaks are felt by the customer rather than the corporation that mishandles their data. This is a similar externality-effect as pollution, where a bad actor's malfeasance generates a larger negative impact than what is directly born by the bad actor itself.

We could discuss whether or not NextDoor has a legitimate use for personal identification data, but that's a tangential discussion. My point was supposed to be that any firm that gathers personal data should be assuming a greater amount of liability than they currently are.

I deleted my account last year (got cold feet as I was using my real name and picture and people I know IRL had started to stumble across some of my answers) but I'm sure my data is probably involved in this breach somewhow.

[0]not my actual user name, but something similar.

Never went back to that site.

Edit: Sorry if stupid question, but that would be throwing major red flags if I got such an email.

Feel better, don't you?

Because we will leak your data, but we won't bother designating a responsible spokeperson be it security officer, cto, vp of engineering or principal architect. It will be the all nebulous quora team.

Firstly, this post is signed by Adam D'Angelo, the CEO and co-founder. If you had opened the link you wouldn't even have had to scroll down, it's literally on the second line, right after the headline. So clearly Quora doesn't do what you've accused them of doing.

Secondly, what good does crucifying one person do? I'm sure if they had written it such that one person was responsible for everything, a similar comment would have been written - "why make one person the scapegoat? The entire team should take responsibility!!"

I don't know anything about your experience working in software, but when there's a fuck up like this, it doesn't do any good to pin the blame on one person. You figure out where your systems failed, and fix the system after conducting a blame free review. If you start pointing fingers within the team, you'll never get anything fixed.

But still, it is not about finger pointing and blaming one individual. It is about a spokeperson for the public.

The guarantee that things will improve. Someone who will handle announcements and communications with the public and will vouch using their real name and reputation that things will improve. Someone who will explain what went wrong and what actions are taken to ensure this does not happen again. Employee training in place? Tier'ed access of data and information to employees. Stricter policies, eg you can't take a database backup home? etc etc.

Again, no crucifixation required, but pinning an identity can be good, because you know that there is someone and who that someone is that puts all their energy into fixing this mess.

Think of someone like Stamos at facebook. I don't know if his contribution in the end was a net positive or not, but it is good to know that there is someone that is focused on the issue.

If you have a CEO they get paid more (supposedly) because they take on responsibilities. So, the buck should stop with the highest ranked officer who has responsibility (eg signs off payments/work) in that area.

If you don't assign blame, you can never improve your team, as there's no feedback. Assigning blame might mean retraining, it doesn't have to mean sacking (but could).