Internet
The Internet Archive is trying to save all your Google+ posts
(The public parts of it, anyway)
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Google’s ill-fated social network, Google+, disappears in a puff of bytes on April 2, removing all traces of your +1’s that no one probably even noticed. Racing against that deadline is a team of dedicated volunteers, the ArchiveTeam, working with the Internet Archive, who aim to save as much public content as they can before the deadline.
In the post announcing the endeavor on Reddit, the teams talk about the methods they’ve been using to archive the content, ever since finding out about the shutdown in Dec 2018.
TL;DR: Most public Google+ content should live on at the Internet Archive thanks to a fanatical bunch of volunteers, and you can help.
In essence, if you do nothing, most, if not all, of your public Google+ posts will be archived. That includes video and images, although the team does say that they might not be archived at full resolution.
If you don’t want your Google+ to live on (almost) forever, the team says to either delete your Google+ account now or get in touch with them to request your specific page(s) removal from the archive. It’s also important to note that not everything will be archived, as threads have a 500 comment maximum and the team says that historically long threads have not been able to be archived.
Google decided to shutter Google+ after news that it had covered up a massive data breach. That was followed by an even more significant data breach, with Google sensibly deciding to hasten the timeline for its demise. The company also added that low levels of engagement on the platform were part of the reasoning too.
The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds
If you’d rather save your Google+ content personally, check out our handy guide to doing just that.
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