Edward Snowden, Facebook, and maybe Quora

What does Edward Snowden think of Quora? Edward Snowden probably hasn't even heard of Quora! Most people haven't. It would be much more unlikely for him to not have heard of Facebook. 

Snowden's comment about Facebook doesn't reflect in any way on whether he has an opinion of Quora, or if he did, whether his opinion about Facebook would have any relevancy to what he thought of Quora. Facebook and Quora have founders (Adam D'Angelo) in common, but little else. Quora is a closely-held private company, with unknown revenue sources and no transparency policy.

Facebook is a free service like Quora, but Facebook makes extensive use of advertising in order to generate revenue. Facebook also generates revenue through other means, using its repository of user-contributed data. In contrast, Quora does not display any (overtly) user-targeted advertising. Facebook common equity is publicly traded on listed stock exchanges following its IPO in 2012. 

Given widespread knowledge of Facebook's business model, past privacy controversies covered in the press, and its relative transparency as a public company, I am surprised that Snowden would expect Facebook to make any sort of "commitment to the user". 

Facebook users pay nothing to use Facebook. Instead, and this is a cliche by now yet accurate, users ARE Facebook's product! Edward Snowden said this about Facebook:

They need to decide who they work for: the government or the people who use their services.

Users are not Facebook's customers. Facebook works for the businesses and organizations who pay for its services.

Does Facebook work for one or more governments in some capacity? 

Snowden suggests this in his comment. The answer is probably yes, although payment might be quid pro quo as well as cash. 

Facebook primarily works for the corporations and businesses that pay for user-targeted advertising on Facebook's platform. Edward Snowden, much like Glenn Greenwald, rarely portrays corporate invasion of privacy as a concern, preferring to focus on governments instead.

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.