Quora monetization strategy and the surveillance state?

How deeply connected is Quora to our government's intelligence agencies?

I'm going to answer this question seriously, even though it makes me laugh a little.

The context topic is "Quora Business Model and Monetization". There would be no reason for Quora to have any connection with U.S. government intelligence agencies in order to sustain itself as a viable business, i.e. a going concern.

In the somewhat implausible scenario that the U.S. government wanted to use Quora content or user data for national security purposes, or even law enforcement purposes as needed (e.g. for collecting evidence in the course of a criminal investigation), there would be no need to pay Quora. Quora is a U.S.-domiciled company, and it uses Amazon Web Services to store its data. Both Quora and AWS must comply with U.S. government requests for data. If necessary, the U.S. government could compel Quora to cooperate by a wide variety of entirely legal means.[1] 

It isn't a quid pro quo relationship. That is to say, the following scenario would NOT be a monetization or business model for Quora:

NSA/CIA/FBI:  

Give us your user data and let us interact with your users as we see fit.

 
Quora:  

Okay! How much will you pay us?

 
NSA/CIA/FBI:  

We'll pay you $12 million dollars per year.

 
Quora:  

Sounds good. Deposit a million dollars on the third Thursday of every month in Marc Bodnick's checking account.

 
NSA/CIA/FBI:  

Okay!

 
Quora

   😀 

 
NSA/CIA/FBI 

   😀

 
There are some other possibilities worth considering. The question doesn't actually specify "US government", only "our government", although the topic tags do include the NSA, DHS, FBI, and CIA.

IFF 

   those tags were not present
AND 

   "government" referred to any other nation beside the USA,
THEN that would be a possible monetization source for Quora, i.e. accepting payment from another nation's intelligence agency, or possibly multiple nations' intelligence agencies, in an effort to scale up!

I have no idea if that would be legal. I also doubt that one country, let alone many countries, would want to pay Quora on an ongoing basis, or even a one-time lump sum, to learn who asked inane dating advice questions as Anon. 

Next, I noticed that OP answered his own question, although his answer was down voted and collapsed. Some of Ray Newman's answer to Quora Business Model and Monetization? should have been part of the question details, especially this part:

"How many requests for information [has Quora] received from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the nature of the requests, whether court orders were required, etc."

That information is usually called a Transparency Report. Many companies, led by Google then Twitter and others, release this information on a periodic basis for the public. 

 Quora does not issue transparency reports, although two questions about it have been asked, which remain unanswered by Quora:

Does Quora intend to release a government transparency report?

Where does Quora publish its government transparency report?

I am not insinuating anything pejorative, nor suggestive of a sub rosa relationship between Quora and the US government, nor that Quora has been suborned by any agent of a foreign power.

[1] This would be true even in the absence of Section 215 of the Patriot Act or the FBI's bulk data collection, both of which will end at midnight on 1 June 2015, unless Mitch McConnell can get an extension on a program that Obama executed, but the Senate never voted to approve. Based on the events of 22 May 2015, it seems unlikely that McConnell and Obama will be successful. 

See The Weird End of the NSA's Phone Dragnet,

 

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled that while the [NSA] has long claimed to be acting in accordance with Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the text of that law in fact authorizes no such program. The Obama Administration has been executing a policy that the legislature never passed into being. But the law that doesn’t even authorize the program is set to expire at the end of the month. The court reasoned that Congress could let it expire or vote to change it. For this reason, the court declined to issue an order shutting the program down. President Obama didn’t shut the program down either. One might think the illegality of its ongoing operations would bother him, but he’s effectively punted to Congress too.
...
There’s a program that Congress never approved. The House weirdly had to vote to get rid of it. They did so. But the Senate had to follow suit, voting to get rid of the program that they never passed. And they failed even though 57 Senators were in favor. So an illegal program will continue, despite majorities in both houses of Congress casting votes to end what they never began. And the only reason their failure doesn’t matter is that legal provisions that don’t in fact authorize the program will soon expire. And then it will end.

Due to recent libertarian and anti- surveillance sentiment:

Mitch McConnell may still be majority leader, but for now, it’s Rand Paul’s Senate.