Navigating Quora's Muting and Blocking Policies: Understanding Why Blocked User Questions Still Appear in Your Feed

Have you ever encountered a situation where, despite blocking or muting someone, their questions still appear in your Quora feed? You might be wondering, what's the point of blocking and muting if their questions still show up?

Understanding the Problem

Your real question is: I blocked and muted these people. Why do their questions still appear in my feed?

The answer lies in Quora's policies and the nature of its feeds system. Quora views questions as community property, which means these questions are distributed based on content you interact with, rather than being directly linked to a specific user. This allows Quora to promote valuable and relevant content to all users, even those who have opted not to see certain users' posts.

Understanding Quora's Feeds

According to Quora's page, the platform has multiple types of feeds:

Home Feed (Red Circle): General questions distributed by Quora based on the content you interact with. People You Follow Feed (Blue Circle): Specific questions and content from users you follow. Questions Feed (Black Circle): This is composed of three separate feeds. Spaces Feed (Green Circle): Questions and content from Spaces you are part of. Notifications Feed (Fuchsia Circle): Informative messages about activity on the platform.

In these different feeds, only the Answer Requests feed is where blocking has a direct impact on visible content.

Blocking and Muting: What's the Difference?

Muting someone on Quora is designed to stop their activity and content from appearing in your feed. However, questions are considered community property, and therefore, do not get filtered out by muting.

Muting

Screenshot 1 shows the Mute form. When you mute a person, it prevents their activity and content from appearing in your feed yellow highlight. However, questions are not considered their content; therefore, they can still appear in your feed despite being muted.

Blocking, on the other hand, prevents the blocked person from requesting your answers. This means that you won’t receive notifications or see their questions in your Answer Requests feed. This check can significantly impact the cleanliness of your feed.

Blocking

Screenshot 2 demonstrates that blocking someone does not keep questions out. It only stops the blocked user from requesting answers from you directly.

The block form is focused on direct contact, such as sending messages requesting answers. Preventing content sharing is part of the broader goal of stopping abuse.

The Purpose of Blocking and Muting

Blocking and muting have distinct purposes:

Muting is useful if you don’t want to block a user completely but still want to avoid constant notifications or seeing their content in your feed. Blocking is more about preventing direct contact and potentially abusive content sharing.

If you find that seeing the person's name or profile, or their questions, is too intrusive, you might consider that Quora might not be the best platform for you. Quora's mission is to ‘share and grow the world’s knowledge,’ so they encourage a wide range of content, even from users who might be difficult to interact with.

If you find this philosophy unsuitable, it might be time to re-evaluate your preferences or consider alternative platforms. Remember, Quora aims to allow users to read everything, even content posted by people they don't get along with. People you block can still post valuable information.

In summary, while muting someone on Quora might not stop all their content from appearing in your feed, it does help manage your feed's visibility. Blocking, however, can significantly reduce the appearance of unwanted questions and notifications from specific users.