Honestly, yes, Quora and Reddit both have some bad patterns around their signup flows (esp mobile). I won't defend those.
That said, they are far from the worst offenders. Facebook has done some really shady things around inviting your contacts, recommending people you may know, sharing/exposing your data to other apps, etc. LinkedIn has done some lawsuit-worthy shady things in that area too (e.g. [1]). News sites (and others) are paid to put tracking pixels on their sites so data can be harvested via data brokers and sold back into the ad/tracking ecosystem.
All around, Quora had some of the smartest, most passionate engineers / PMs / managers I've ever worked with (some of which have gone on to start very successful companies themselves). I'd be lying if I said I didn't think some product decisions affected recruiting at all, but it's a far cry from "candidates who only attract one offer".
As a consumer of posts who wants to occasionally read Quora on my phone's DDG browser, I just no longer bother to click the link. Ditto with Reddit unless I feel like fighting their popups. Logging in or downloading the apps? You've gotta be kidding. Nothing would be a bigger waste of time or storage on my phone. FB is obnoxious in that they only let you view one page w/o logging in, but I never had a FB account so I just ignore any links to them. I suspect a lot of other people as consumers - not privacy advocates or engineers - find these login/download walls annoying enough to drop engagement. Quora is particularly obnoxious and I've never had an account with them, but removing a few invisible divs in the dom editor usually lets me read what I need to.
That said, they are far from the worst offenders. Facebook has done some really shady things around inviting your contacts, recommending people you may know, sharing/exposing your data to other apps, etc. LinkedIn has done some lawsuit-worthy shady things in that area too (e.g. [1]). News sites (and others) are paid to put tracking pixels on their sites so data can be harvested via data brokers and sold back into the ad/tracking ecosystem.
All around, Quora had some of the smartest, most passionate engineers / PMs / managers I've ever worked with (some of which have gone on to start very successful companies themselves). I'd be lying if I said I didn't think some product decisions affected recruiting at all, but it's a far cry from "candidates who only attract one offer".
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3051906/after-lawsuit-settlement...