chapotraphouse

Throwaway because I'm referencing specific accounts and have bad opsec on main.

I saw a post referencing Quora earlier and it made me realize that a lot of people probably don't know just how bad it is. Most people don't actually know that Quora has a whole social media side in addition to the Q&A part. There's profiles, follow functions, and groups for posts and image sharing. But Quora is very lax in its moderation, and this side of Quora is pretty obscure, so it tends to attract Nazis who get kicked out of other spaces.

I first discovered the infestation years ago when I encountered a profile with a lengthy account of blood libel, though I couldn't locate the profile now (if you don't know what that is, all I'll say is it's a medieval antisemitic conspiracy theory invoked by Nazis and you don't really need to know more ) I don't know if that account got taken down or not, but when I looked again for this post, I recognized a lot of the ones I found.

If you know the dogwhistles, like "It's OK to be White" it's easy enough to discover a profile that says something like "Fighting against moral deg-----cy and a positive and safe future for my White children," which you can probably recognize as a reference to the 14 words. From there, you can look at the profiles they follow and the groups they're in to get deeper into the rabbit hole, to the people who don't bother wearing a mask.

The most blatant I found was a profile named "Hit Lore" with a profile pic of Hitler and "fuck the jews hiel hitler" in their description, which has been up for almost a year. Here's Stefan Volk with "Studying National Socialism," "Unemployed since 1945" and "Studied White Genocide & Political Correctness at Globalization." Helmut Wighard with a whole spiel praising National Socialism. Chloe with "Studied Adolf Hitler & Time Travel at Western Civilization" and who thinks they're being cute with "I’m everything you think I am … just not the way you define that. And there’s nothing “neo-” about it." They're all very clearly Nazis, and aside from the first one they've been active for years with no moderation, and I specifically remember finding those accounts and reporting them years ago.

In addition to the accounts, there are several groups spreading blatant bigotry and Nazi propaganda, including Holocaust denial, such as Holocaust Forensics. There's also a group just called National Socialism spreading clear propaganda and Christian Identity which features blatantly offensive Jewish caricatures in its most recent post.

I would love to suggest doxxing these people (though I personally don't have any experience with that) but unfortunately most of them aren't dumb enough to post any identifying information. I did find two that have pictures, though I can't be sure that it's actually them and they didn't just grab it off the internet somewhere: Mark Sims, the admin of Holocaust Forensics, and DracomaxXx1988. The latter is the most vulnerable one I found and has more (possibly fake) information in their wall of text full of Nazi shit. Also, if anyone has the stomach for infiltration, there's a Telegram link in the OK to be White group.

There's plenty of bigoted content in their meme channels but I don't especially want to expose myself to it too much, or expose others to it. There's also people in these circles doing some really obvious and disgusting digital blackface, and obviously tons of transphobia.

They may not have many followers compared to other platforms, and they may just be edgy online losers, but anything we can do to fuck with them is a positive. They shouldn't feel safe showing their faces, at the very least.

And in the meantime, know that Quora fucking sucks. There's no verification, no fact-checking, and not even the most cursory glance at people's profiles, and it has who knows how many of these bad actors on there asking and answers questions to spread lies, propaganda, and hate. I'd suggest mass reporting but the mods don't do shit.

Fuck Quora, and fuck the Nazis they allow on their platform.