Before Google+ Shuts Down, The Internet Archive Will Preserve Its Posts (theverge.com) 30
Google+ "was an Internet-based social network. It was almost 8 years old," reports KilledByGoogle.com, which bills itself as "The Google Graveyard: A list of dead products Google has killed and laid to rest in the Google Cemetery."
But before Google+ closes for good in April, its posts are being preserved by Internet Archive and the ArchiveTeam, reports the Verge: In a post on Reddit, the sites announced that they had begun their efforts to archive the posts using scripts to capture and back up the data in an effort to preserve it. The teams say that their efforts will only encompass posts that are currently available to the public: they won't be able to back up posts that are marked private or deleted... They also note that they won't be able to capture everything: comment threads have a limit of 500 comments, "but only presents a subset of these as static HTML. It's not clear that long discussion threads will be preserved." They also say that images and video won't be preserved at full resolution...
They also urge people who don't want their content to be archived to delete their accounts, and pointed to a procedure to request the removal of specific content.
A bit of history: Linus Torvalds launched a Google+ page in 2017 called "Gadget Reviews" -- where he made exactly six posts.
But before Google+ closes for good in April, its posts are being preserved by Internet Archive and the ArchiveTeam, reports the Verge: In a post on Reddit, the sites announced that they had begun their efforts to archive the posts using scripts to capture and back up the data in an effort to preserve it. The teams say that their efforts will only encompass posts that are currently available to the public: they won't be able to back up posts that are marked private or deleted... They also note that they won't be able to capture everything: comment threads have a limit of 500 comments, "but only presents a subset of these as static HTML. It's not clear that long discussion threads will be preserved." They also say that images and video won't be preserved at full resolution...
They also urge people who don't want their content to be archived to delete their accounts, and pointed to a procedure to request the removal of specific content.
A bit of history: Linus Torvalds launched a Google+ page in 2017 called "Gadget Reviews" -- where he made exactly six posts.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my favorite courses in college was actually a history class that involved nothing of dates, important people, or memorable events. Instead it focused entirely on the common people and how they lived and went about their lives. It gave me a much greater appreciation for history and is something that really stuck with me. The humanities usually get a hard time from the STEM side, but when they're well taught I believe that they're as valuable educationally as any of the other courses that I took.
Re: (Score:2)
I posted more than that :-) I'm going to save some of the stuff, there were links to a lot of things I posted that wouldn't make it on Facebook for being too nerdy. Some things you post to family and old high school friends, and some things you post to current friends, and they don't often overlap.
Will miss Google+ (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I won't mourn the loss of any centralized platforms because the platforms they themselves killed were far more interesting.
Google killed usenet using a two-prong approach. Kill dejanews to destroy the past, then flood it with garbage "groups" to destroy the present.
Re: (Score:2)
People need to get this aspect of Google into their heads, and keep it there.
Google sees everything anyone on Google does. Whether it's Docs, or +, or gmail.
And they can flag it for anything they happen to be looking for that particular week.
I used Google+ reluctantly and infrequently, I don't use Docs, and I do not use gmail for important business. It's my "junk drawer" of email accounts.
Re: (Score:1)
Google sees everything anyone on Google does. Whether it's Docs, or +, or gmail.
Or netnews. Just because the webby Google "Usenet" archive is crap doesn't mean their interfaces aren't. Or elsewhere on the web. I am wondering how much of the web is intentionally "dark" in that it prevents Google's crawler(s) from fetching the pages.
Re: (Score:2)
All it is, is sign of how incompetent Google is in reality. Search wars, was a competition of who was the worst at providing it and not who was the best, Google won by being the least worst but there in after got progressively worse, more invasive and more false search results and more advertising. There were reasonable social media players out there and Google could not simply win the battle of who was the worst.
Competition is heating up again and those who could win, who was the worst, of course straight
There you go (Score:2)
Even Linus couldn’t really warm up to Google+...
Quick! (Score:4, Funny)
Quick everyone! Fire up your old accounts and post all the porn you saved from Tumblr. Lets make sure it doesn't get lost forever.
Archive garbage (Score:1)
Watch it rot. Eventually it will be unreadable, like Google's archive of Usenet.
Re: Archive garbage (Score:1)
Which interesting enough is not mentioned on the KilledByGoogle site.
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares? they will still have to comply if you ask them to delete your stuff and info about you.
It's not like that's optional for google to comply with, so there can't be a deadline like that.
Archive.org, among the best of the internet. (Score:4, Insightful)
bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
view-source:https://killedbygoogle.com/
It's too bad.... (Score:2)
...that they can't go back in time and archive all the Compuserve content from way back. Compuserve was the first worldwide BBS, a forerunner to the consumer internet. It's "home" was DEC server in Columbus, Ohio. Since many companies and individuals used Compuserve as they do the web today, when the service disappeared, a ton of useful data was lost. Although nothing like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, it still was a great loss of history.
Speaking of the past Google Plus Accounts (Score:1)
I hope they don't forget the 3.4 million URLS from 2017 left in 50,000 sitmap.xmls files randomly left ~2 years ago... It's always a riot to pick one and see if that person made ANY posts.. ever.