How Is Babby Deplatformed?
April 5, 2021 12:49 PM   Subscribe

Yahoo Answers, [previously], is shutting down on May 4.
posted by 1970s Antihero (41 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
My thoughts go out to Griffin McElroy during this terrible time.
posted by meese at 12:52 PM on April 5, 2021 [41 favorites]


Omg! I haven’t listened to MBMBAM in quite a while. Had the Brothers McElroy made plans for this unfortunately inevitable occurrence?
posted by rogerroger at 12:53 PM on April 5, 2021


I used to answer a ton of stuff on YA... but got bored of it.

And I can see how while helpful to some, it can also be an enormous time sink for moderators, and people gaming the system for more points, or use them as spam platforms, or outright flag people for malicious purposes. Then you need mods to get points back, and so on.

Well, there's always Quora. :D
posted by kschang at 12:58 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Dear Quora, what should I use to get questions answered now that yahoo is gone?
posted by Jacen at 1:13 PM on April 5, 2021 [25 favorites]


The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:
> [...] what should I use to get questions answered now that yahoo is gone?
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
Mu.
posted by sourcequench at 1:19 PM on April 5, 2021 [14 favorites]


Like, AskMe is good for what it does but I doubt it's gonna provide as much in the way of funny podcast bits.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:35 PM on April 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


Yahoo Answers used to be the go-to cheating site for students looking for someone else to answer their homework problems. Now Chegg and CourseHero have gladly stepped into that nefarious role, and found a way to monetize cheating quite efficiently.
posted by darkstar at 1:36 PM on April 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


As long as the Wayback Machine preserves the Peak Internet that is qid 20080211063124AA26on8, the rest of it can go to the great bit bucket in the sky as far as I'm concerned.
posted by flabdablet at 1:51 PM on April 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


Verizon!
posted by flabdablet at 1:57 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Verizon!

What exactly did they get out of buying Yahoo!?
posted by octothorpe at 2:03 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


This could be the kind of cross-promotion deal Metafilter needs to get back on the map, Cortex I hope you've at least reached out.

Are you ready for the final AskMe?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:14 PM on April 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


I can understand not wanting to spend money to support it going forward, but why are they deleting it? Wouldn't just maintaining the existing pages be close to costless and still bring in some ad money? Or is there just so much junk there that it hurts the brand, as suggested by their statement that they want to "deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content"?
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:16 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


What exactly did they get out of buying Yahoo!?

Nine degrees more whimsy.
posted by flabdablet at 2:19 PM on April 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


As long as the Wayback Machine preserves the Peak Internet that is qid 20080211063124AA26on8, the rest of it can go to the great bit bucket in the sky as far as I'm concerned.

Dangerops prangnet sex?
posted by sideshow at 2:20 PM on April 5, 2021 [7 favorites]


I almost forgot it existed. Years ago I told Google to stop showing results from there. All noise, no signal.

Anyway, thus continues Yahoo’s role as the great undertaker of the web.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:26 PM on April 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


cue soundtrack
posted by flabdablet at 2:36 PM on April 5, 2021


.

I get emails from Quora (I forget why), and there are certainly a lot of garbage questions and answers on that site. But in that cause, it's blowhard, malicious, and often right-wing, whereas Yahoo Answers specified in kid and teen bullshit. No one's asking Quora how they get pegnate.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:36 PM on April 5, 2021 [5 favorites]


Quora wouldn't know.
posted by flabdablet at 2:37 PM on April 5, 2021 [17 favorites]


Quora is soooo much spam 'answers' from people trying to set themselves up as 'experts' or simply shilling their services. Or writing blog-ish posts, even with reaction gifs, full of marketing self-help platitude lists, etc. Bleargh.
posted by signal at 2:47 PM on April 5, 2021 [13 favorites]


Quora has occasional gems in it. It varies depending on the subject. But,

blowhard, malicious, and often right-wing

Yes, very much this, too, and it shows up in trollish bad-faith questions as well as the answers. It can be tiresome to wade through the trash to get to something worthwhile.
posted by gimonca at 3:09 PM on April 5, 2021


Wouldn't just maintaining the existing pages be close to costless and still bring in some ad money? Or is there just so much junk there that it hurts the brand, as suggested by their statement that they want to "deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content"?

Thanks for coming up with that quote.

The use of "trusted" makes me think they were getting static because people were linking to anti-vax content in the archives.
posted by jamjam at 3:15 PM on April 5, 2021


Yahoo shut down _________. is evergreen. It's what they do.

How can you run a massive internet company fueled by nothing beyond people having liked you in 1998, a stack of not profitable email accounts, and repeatedly mothballing your own stuff?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:18 PM on April 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


I can't completely explain this but Quora is the Mensa of the web.
posted by condour75 at 3:22 PM on April 5, 2021 [25 favorites]


Yahoo is the Jacob Wohl of Internet companies. Everyone but themselves know they're shit and hated.

Every couple years I'm reminded they still exist (usually when something they bought folds) and shake my head in wonder at the sheer qty of stupid decisions the company made over the years.
posted by dobbs at 3:24 PM on April 5, 2021


Omg! I haven’t listened to MBMBAM in quite a while. Had the Brothers McElroy made plans for this unfortunately inevitable occurrence?

They have massively diversified and have like a dozen other podcasts. Even MBMBAM only barely does yahoo questions any more.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:25 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Yahoo shut down _________. is evergreen. It's what they do.
How can you run a massive internet company fueled by nothing beyond people having liked you in 1998, a stack of not profitable email accounts, and repeatedly mothballing your own stuff?


Fantasy football. Literally, I think that's it.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:30 PM on April 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


I am always so thankful that AskMe exists
posted by bleep at 3:40 PM on April 5, 2021 [14 favorites]


It is however very funny that they timed this so Yahoo Answers will probably be gone before Griffin McElroy gets back from paternity leave. They don't even get to do a big sendoff episode.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:16 PM on April 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


The soundtrack that came to mind for me was Neil Cicirega's Yahoo, but I'm inordinately fond of his mashups.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:22 PM on April 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


How can you run a massive internet company fueled by nothing beyond people having liked you in 1998, a stack of not profitable email accounts, and repeatedly mothballing your own stuff?

The answer used to be "owning a big chunk of Alibaba." Not sure what it is any more.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:39 PM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Yahoo shut down _________. is evergreen. It's what they do.

I mean, they say that about Google, too.
posted by ryanrs at 8:44 PM on April 5, 2021


kschang: I used to answer a ton of stuff on YA... but got bored of it.

Same here. I mostly answered questions about menstrual cups, as I was in my newly converted phase* and there was disinformation going around. I also answered questions that I believed should have been about menstrual cups.

*which lasted several years
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:33 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Remember when Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email was hacked? Probably not, no-one cared about this non-problem.

It was illustrative of what a Yahoo! user may look like. Sarah Palin. Just about what I expected.
posted by adept256 at 2:00 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Look, do you want your email hosted by a giant smart evil company like Google, or would you rather it operate out of a van down by the river like Yahoo!?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:32 AM on April 6, 2021 [11 favorites]


People can still send me mails via my defunct account with the giant evil corporation if they like, or via the even more defunct account with the weirdly incompetent company remnant if they really prefer; all of them get passed on to me via the never been even slightly problematic outfit I've been more than happy to pay to handle my mail, contacts and calendar for seven years now.

With free email you really do get the quality of service you've paid for.
posted by flabdablet at 5:51 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


The NYTimes quotes Justin McElroy. Griffin really should have formed babby a month or two later.
posted by m@f at 2:03 PM on April 6, 2021 [7 favorites]


Justin Mcelroy, providing a eulogy


Honestly, it's really touching.
posted by meese at 7:03 AM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]


I used to answer a ton of stuff on YA... but got bored of it.

I did as well, until I got in a job that had me too busy. Mostly in the ob/gyn and sexual health sections, because - my God, so many people were deprived of honest information about this while they were growing up and they needed it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:48 AM on April 8, 2021


Wow that was an excellent eulogy. Justin is a very insightful person.
But he might as well have been saying “It’s OK, I’ve gotten too high before myself. We all have. Let’s eat an orange slice and talk about spaghetti for a while.”
Not to make this too much about MBMBAM but this vibe is also what I enjoy about their show, especially "the sort of surrealist vulnerability and absurdist humanism". AskMe is not going to be a font of that stuff unfortunately even if I for one use it for the exact reasons Justin outlines for YA.
posted by bleep at 10:12 AM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]




$1, Drew!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:54 AM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


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