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Quora users (bots?) are copying a significant amount of Stack Exchange questions to Quora, without proper attribution. It seems quite systematic.

Examples from https://money.stackexchange.com:

Examples from https://travel.stackexchange.com:

I'm guessing that some other Stack Exchange websites are affected.

I wonder whether Quora help organize this content theft because when looking at the profiles of the Quora "users" that copy all questions, such as https://www.quora.com/profile/Dex-Jackson/questions (he's the one copying https://money.stackexchange.com's questions) and https://www.quora.com/profile/Steve-Tang-6/questions (he's the one copying https://travel.stackexchange.com's questions), we don't see the questions in the user profiles, which shouldn't be happening and therefore seems to be some kind of cover up only Quora could technically do, as far as I know.

Anyway, how can we make this systematic content license infringement stop?

Updates:

So for now I'm simply double posting my questions on both Stack Exchange and Quora, which on the upside of makes it a bit easier to retrieve the content of questions automatically removed on Stack Exchange.

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  • 6
    Also, if you own a significant copyright interest in a given post, you can file a DMCA takedown notice.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Jan 18, 2020 at 21:40
  • 5
    Do flag those Quora posts. I regularly investigate plagiarism in the opposite direction but come across content copied to Quora from here, and I regularly find the flagged posts deleted when revisiting later.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Jan 19, 2020 at 0:55
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    The unlisted questions are posted using the “limited” setting, see quora.com/… These accounts are Quora Partner accounts hoping to make money from posting as many questions as possible.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Jan 19, 2020 at 1:06
  • 3
    And finally, you want to look at the edits tab on these users profiles; their questions may not be directly listed but all their posting activity is.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Jan 19, 2020 at 1:12
  • 3
    @MartijnPieters Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Quora partners and the limited setting (they didn't exist when I was using Quora actively). Time to report Quora users/partners!
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jan 19, 2020 at 3:49
  • 3
    "how can we make this systematic content license infringement stop?" Probably only if financial penalties can be tied to repeated such actions.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Jan 19, 2020 at 21:48
  • 3
    Hopefully they will copy this question.
    – Stop Harming the Community
    Jan 20, 2020 at 17:40
  • 3
    If anyone is wondering the reason SE should never offer a paid option Quora Partner is an example of reason that should ever happen.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 27, 2020 at 3:17
  • 1
    It is true that they don't take plagiarism (by the users) seriously at Quora, but why would they do it when they realise they would get caught in short order? They can't be that desperate for the VC exit (IPO?)?
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Jan 27, 2020 at 23:00
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    @PeterMortensen At that point it is unclear if the copyright infringement is organized directly by Quora, independently by some Quora employees, a group of non-Quora employees trying to milk the Quora Partners program or just some hobbyists. We'll judge how IPO desperate Quora is based on their response, but definitely the brand of Quora as a high-quality question-answering website has sunk deeply over the past few years so they may be just aiming for quantity at that point and turning a blind eye on plagiarism.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jan 27, 2020 at 23:05
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    The Quora CEO said few days ago that they need to "reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level" techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/layoffs-hit-qa-startup-quora so yes, they might be relatively desperate for cash.
    – Nemo
    Jan 30, 2020 at 9:39
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    @Nemo thanks, interesting, they better keep their lawyers though if they intend to keep trying to perform large scale copyright infringement.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jan 30, 2020 at 15:45
  • Maybe I'm missing something, but I just clicked through the examples you gave at the beginning of your question and I don't see how any of the actual content has been duplicated, just the titles of the questions. Has something changed (the content was removed) or was it always the case that just the titles were copied over, without the body of the questions or the answers?
    – dwizum
    Mar 9, 2020 at 13:34
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    @dwizum Only titles were copied, because questions on Quora cannot have content, only titles. In many cases the questions are self-contained in the titles.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Mar 9, 2020 at 16:17
  • 2
    Related (MSO): Curious case of copied code
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Jul 7, 2020 at 15:35

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