In my opinion, it's not enough. It should not be enabled by default, and it should not exist at all. Services like Quora should not introduce changes that compromise the privacy of accounts that already exist. If I hadn't seen this submission on Hacker News, I wouldn't have known about the change.
Completely agree. Facebook paved the way for this bullshit. If they would charge $1/month they would beat Facebook's revenue/user rate and could skip the advertising headaches and the pressure to be slimy.
A huge number of people would drop off of FB, and would never try quora, if they charged. Fewer people on each makes each less useful to each potential new user, and to every existing user, causing more people to drop off.
At some point the pressure is on to join, however, because everybody else is on it. Like having a cell phone: people expect to be able to reach you, so you are pressured into having one (even some old buggers who swore they never would finally succumbed).
So while I agree there would be a loss, I'm not so sure about "huge." Would people be pissed? Yes. Would there be backlash? Absolutely. Would it open the door wider for a competitor? Probably. But they would be making honest money, more than they are now, and could innovate.
I may be wrong about its chances for success, but to me it's not obviously a failing move.
People usually shut down profiles for privacy reasons, so deactivation will rarely be of any use to them; they are better off trying to manually delete their content, while they still have a semblance of write access in that regard.
Deactivation works in some instances on a hypothetical level, but people tend to leave a service, because they don't trust it, which leaves that option moot.
Basically, because this type of maneuver is low and shitty and we can see it
most people won't even know it happened, new users will have to discover by themselves, a lot of people will not like but won't care enough to opt-out, most who really dislike will opt-out and the rest who are actively against it, that are opinionated and will try to shed a light on how unethical and unconsiderate this is and consequently put a bad face on them will be significantly cut down
