Donald Trump may have turned Reddit into his own personal “safe space” for his “Ask Me Anything” last Wednesday, but at least he was willing to wade into Reddit for a chance to speak to a millennial audience. When Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine take questions from social media next week, they’ll do it on the little-known, tech-insider website Quora.
Users can start submitting questions for the Democratic duo Monday afternoon, and Clinton and Kaine will answer a handful of curated questions on August 8. So far, the submitted questions are more nuanced that the ones Trump answered in his Reddit session, with Quora users asking Clinton and Kaine how they will address Trump supporters‘ concerns in their administration, what they think of Black Lives Matter, and what the ticket’s top five priorities will be once elected.
Quora users may also “upvote” questions they feel Clinton and Kaine should answer. Quora has not said if voting will factor into which questions Clinton and Kaine eventually choose.
Quora seems like a strange choice for social media outreach, especially given that Clinton is trying desperately to win over Bernie Sanders supporters, most of whom are younger. Quora has half the traffic of Reddit (about 100 million unique visitors vs. Reddit’s 235 million), and while its new “Sessions” channel—based on Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” model—is one of the site’s more popular features, it’s still not heavily trafficked.
Neither of Quora’s founders, Facebook alums Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, seem to have an ongoing relationship with the Clinton campaign, but Tim Kaine was one of the Quora “Session” channel’s first guests, and Hillary Clinton has also done a Quora session. Neither have done a Reddit AMA.
Still, Quora is less a user-driven forum than a slightly fancier version of Yahoo Answers. Quora pretends to be more highbrow in nature—you probably won’t find teenagers asking about cloning Lindsay Lohan—but it’s still got plenty of trashy fare: You will find otherwise respectable people asking about George Clooney’s plastic surgery.
Quora is also a very controlled environment. Unlike Reddit, Quora’s moderators encourage civility and Sessions guests have the ability to answer in long form. So while Clinton might be continuing her campaign’s proud tradition of tone-deaf millennial outreach, she might just be looking for an Internet “safe space” of her own.
