Yahoo Answers will be shut down forever on May 4th – The Verge

Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Q&A platforms in the history of the internet, is shutting down on May 4th. Thats the day the Yahoo Answers website will start redirecting to the Yahoo homepage, and all of the platforms archives will apparently cease to exist. The platform has been operating since 2005, and in the years since its relevance as a meme haven has remained intact while its practicality as a forum has waned during the rise of Reddit, Quora, and other competing internet hangouts.

Yahoo, which is now part of Verizon Media Group following the companys sale to the telecom for nearly $5 billion in 2017, announced the change at the top of the Yahoo Answers homepage. The message links to an FAQ, which details the timeline of the shutdown. Starting April 20th, the platform will no longer accept new submissions, the FAQ explains.

Users will also have until June 30th to request their data or itll be inaccessible after that. That includes all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images, Yahoo says, but you wont be able to download other users content, questions, or answers.

A note sent to active Yahoo Answers members provides a little more detail as to why Yahoo is shutting down the platform, including that it has become less popular over the years and that the company decided to shift our resources away from the product to focus on products that better serve our members.

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 war once a key part of Yahoos 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 Yahoos 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 were proud and honored to have helped you connect with and learn from the Yahoo community these past sixteen years. If youd like to provide feedback, please feel free to reach out to our team at yahoo_answers_sunset@verizonmedia.com.

Sincerely, The Yahoo Answers team

Perhaps the shutdown is for the best, considering the site appears to be overrun with far-right conspiratorial garbage. The current Yahoo Answers homepage is highlighting such introspective gems in its discover section as, Will America survive 4 years of Joe Biden? and Will this summer be record riots by BLM and antifa?, as well as this instant classic, Was Stalin right about everything?

May all the wayward souls of Yahoo Answers now find the information theyre looking for somewhere more credible, and may someone somewhere someday find the answer to how babby is formed.

Update April 6th, 10:22AM ET: Added more information and links about the history and legacy of Yahoo Answers.

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Yahoo Answers will be shut down forever on May 4th - The Verge