Yahoo Answers to shut down on May 4

Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th.

The platform is one of the longest-running and Q&A portals in the history of the internet. It launched back in 2005 to help people around the world connect and share information, but it’s degraded in quality over the years and has turned into a platform where people go to ask weird, often hateful questions.

Starting on April 20th, users will no longer be able to post new questions or answers to the platform. Additionally, users will also have until June 30th to request their data, but afterwards, it’ll be inaccessible. This includes “all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images.” Yahoo says you also “won’t be able to download other users’ content, questions, or answers.”

Yahoo’s full statement regarding Answers’ closure can be found below:

Dear Yahoo Answers Community,

We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people around the world connect and share information. With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on a variety of topics, creating a community of global knowledge sharing. While we could not have been prouder of what we accomplished together, we are reaching out today to let you know that we have decided to shut down Yahoo Answers on May 4th, 2021.

While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed. To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content.

Starting on April 20th you will no longer be able to post any new questions or answers. However, you can still view any posted questions and answers until May 4th. On May 4th the site will be shutting down. If you would like to download a copy of your questions and answers you have posted, you can do this by signing into Your Privacy Dashboard and requesting a download. You will be able to do this until June 30th, 2021 after which your Yahoo Answers data will be securely deleted and no longer available. The closure of Yahoo Answers will not affect your Yahoo account or other Yahoo services. For further information and instructions on how to download your data, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions or copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN35642.html

Thank you for contributing to Yahoo Answers — we’re proud and honored to have helped you connect with and learn from the Yahoo community these past sixteen years. If you’d like to provide feedback, please feel free to reach out to our team at yahoo_answers_sunset@verizonmedia.com

Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team

Yahoo Answers announced the closure on its homepage and linked to a FAQ page here.

In the context of the modern internet, this really isn’t a big loss, especially as the platform’s community has slowly fallen apart and become more toxic over the years. To see examples of some of the dumb questions people are still asking on Yahoo Answers, follow this link.

Via: The Verge