Image: Melpomene on DepositPhotos, Karich on Depositphotos

I am, as many of you know, an active user on the question and answer site Quora, where I’ve been posting since June 2012.

I just sent a very long email to a contact I have at Quora admin, with a cc to Quora’s legal team and the founder/CEO’s personal email address.

I suppose I should have known it was coming. In January od 2023, almost exactly two years ago, I saw my first romance scam account on Quora. It used a photo of golfer and model Paige Spiranac to try to separate lonely men from their money. I reported the profile to Quora moderation 11 times, without any result, so finally, on January 22, 2023, I emailed Ms. Spiranac’s agent. I received a polite reply on January 23, and the bogus profile was banned on January 25, so I assume Ms. Spiranac’s team sent a DMCA takedown.

Too little, too late. The message came through loud and clear: “Quora has weak moderation that is tolerant of romance scammers.”

The floodgates opened. Today, Quora is the Internet’s Ground Zero for romance scammers; there are tens of tousands of fake profiles. I report every one I encounter. A few months back, Quora admins asked me to stop reporting them one at a time, so now I note the profile URLs and report them all in one go at the end of the day, typically 200-300 a day.

Universal law of social media:

Every site that doesn’t take action against romance scammers inevitably becomes a ch*ld p*rn site.

It happens in stages.

First, a romance scammer discovers a site. He (almost all romance scammers are “he”) sets up a profile. It doesn’t get banned. He tells his buddies, who also set up scam profiles. Word spreads.

Pretty soon, there’s a huge number of romance scammers, all fighting for the same pool of lonely, gullible marks.

They start “sniping:” one scammer will start commenting on other scammers’ profiles, trying to cut in on marks who respond to scam posts. They start angling for niche marks rather than shotgunning a general approach: some will pretend to be trans women, some will pretend to be heavy women to try to attract “chubby chaser” marks; some will pretend to be BDSM dommes, looking for kinky marks.

Then come the ones using stolen photos of underage children.

If those profiles remain without getting banned immediately, that sends a signal to the ch*ld p*rn community: This site is tolerant of exploitation of minors.

That’s when they move in: people offering CP/CSAM images for sale. They use all kinds of euphemisms: “cheese pizza” (CP), “hot yummy pizza images.”

At first, these are individual low-level sellers. If these accounts remain without being banned, then the organized CP rings move in.

That’s the background.

This morning, I set a lengthy email to my contact in Quora administration. I sent a cc to Quora’s legal team and to Quora’s CEO.

In the past few weeks, the number of profiles openly advertising CP for sale has skyrocketed. Yesterday, I found three organized CP rings operating scores of profiles on Quora.

I call these CP rings the “Evelyn ring,” the “Mornay Ivan” ring, and the “Purple Knott” ring, because of the profile names and the Telegram addresses they use. Out of respect to the victims whose images are being exploited, I’ve pixelated and blacked out the images of the victims; the CP profiles don’t.

The “Evelyn” ring:

The “Mornay Ivan” ring:

The “Purple Knott” ring, which seems to specialize in child bestiality:

Every day I report these. Every day Quora bans most (not all) the accounts I report. Every day there are more. Even though these rings create identical profiles with identical content.

Being stalked on Quora didn’t put me off the site. Getting death threats on Quora didn’t put me off the site. Being doxxed on Quora didn’t put me off the site. Having my content plagiarized didn’t put me off the site. This? This might put me off the site.