
Saving of public Google+ content by the Archive Team has begun - danso
https://www.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/az285j/saving_of_public_google_content_at_the_internet/
======
kentonv
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Over the last couple years it has become increasingly clear that public
personal social media history is a liability. People's histories have often
been weaponized against them, and mass processing of social media has been
used as a weapon against society as a whole (Cambridge Analytica, etc.).

I recently deleted my Facebook account, but didn't take the time to delete
Google+ because I figured it was about to disappear anyway. But now it turns
out some people are building a public archive of my content, and presumably
they aren't going to give me a way to delete it. This makes me uncomfortable.
I have now deleted my Google+ history; I hope they didn't get much of it.

To be clear, I think the Internet Archive is good people with noble
intentions. But given what we've learned recently about social media possibly
being a huge mistake... this effort worries me.

~~~
whereistimbo
If you read the linked post you will find out this section:

If you don't want this to happen, you can request removal of specific items
through the Internet Archive's procedure: [https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360018138951-How-...](https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360018138951-How-do-I-remove-an-item-page-from-the-site-)

~~~
zepearl
I don't understand part of the guide that says:

> _To have your item pages removed, please email info@archive.org from the
> email address used to upload the files._

What does "...from the email address used to upload the files" mean?

If my posts in Google+ are "archived", >>I<< do not have an email address
which was used to upload the Google+ contents... . What am I
misunderstanding/overlooking ? Thx

~~~
duxup
Presumably there is a gmail account that is associated with the post on
Google+?

~~~
dredmorbius
In this case, the email association is with an Internet Archive account for
organisations and individuals who are directly contributing to the Archive.

There is also a DMCA request process, which I've posted to this thread.

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tyingq
There are a few gems on Google+ that would be a shame to lose, like:

[https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/R58WgWwN...](https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/R58WgWwN9jp)

Archived copy: [http://archive.is/4kpvd](http://archive.is/4kpvd)

~~~
dredmorbius
Indeed.

Also infrastructure-like breakage, through APIs, and particularly images:

[https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/07/less-than-a-
mon...](https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/07/less-than-a-month-to-go-
before-google-breaks-hundreds-of-thousands-of-links-all-over-the-internet/)

------
mavhc
In other news, don't bother putting your content on 3rd party websites, it'll
just be deleted and you'll have wasted your time. Set up a server, and a
donation button, with a countdown timer for when the server will be deleted if
no one donates, if it's useful people should pay to keep it going

~~~
ghaff
And eventually people will stop donating (if they ever did) or you'll lose
interest and the content will be deleted anyway. So basically don't bother.
Everything will get deleted someday anyway. (Unless it's saved by the Internet
Archive which may or may not be around forever (as in a very long time). Which
is a bit worrying itself.)

~~~
the_pwner224
This is a great selling point of distributed systems like IPFS <ipfs.io> and
BitTorrent.

With most online services, some entity X (Google in this case) says 'I will
host this data.' Eventually it stops being worth it for X to host that data,
and the data is lost forever (unless someone archives it like this case, which
just changes the X to some other entity).

With distributed content sharing networks, the data is retained as long as
_anyone_ is willing to bear the cost of storing and distributing it. After I
upload a file I may eventually decide that it is no longer worth sharing, but
as long as someone thinks it is a useful file to share they can have it
seeding from their computer. The file is only permanently gone once nobody
thinks it's worth sharing. And with a large population on these networks, that
is equivalent to the file having no actual value - except for historical
research perhaps.

This is actually better than what the parent (mavhc) suggested, because with
the donation method there is still one entity in charge of sharing the data.
Others can archive and share it (if allowed by the primary entity), but there
is still a discoverability problem that is solved by IPFS/BT.

~~~
Avamander
Actually BitTorrent suffers torrent-rot thanks to the DRM that are private
trackers, not a single mainstream client offers you the ability to just
DHT/PEX/LSD(LPD) a torrent which means if the trackers go down the torrents
die. I find it a big concern, even more so in the future.

If ipfs suffers the same problem - noone knows which hash to look up - the
files will be irrevocably lost.

~~~
dvtrn
Isn't tracker "rot" what magnet links were meant to solve or have I
misunderstood that?

~~~
Avamander
Magnet links can't solve it if the torrent is marked private. There's no DHT,
PEX and LSD(LPD).

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kalleboo
Cool! I have the Archive Warrior docker image running on my Synology NAS. I
just checked and it seems I've archived 160 GB of Google+ already.

------
sodosopa
I've made personal copies of rare bits of info for my Asus tablet/laptop but
shuttered my pages down. But that was the needle in the haystack of g+
content, most everything else seem to have slacked off shortly after the
novelty wore off.

------
tyingq
I wonder if Google will take note and make a specific donation. Might be a
good PR move.

~~~
wrs
If Google wanted to help, they could skip all this drama by just rendering
everything themselves and shipping some Transfer Appliances to the archive.

~~~
lostmyoldone
I'm not an expert, but unless there are G+ specific exceptions I've missed, I
believe that the current wording of their terms-of-service would prohibit them
from engaging in the efforts to archive G+ pages.

This it was it says about the rights you give Google by/if you are using their
services:

"The rights you grant [to Google] in this license are for the limited purpose
of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones."

The only rubric archival could possibly fall under would be "promotion", but
that feels marginal at best.

~~~
wrs
I see your point, but it’s hard to believe the Internet Archive has _more_
ability to do this than Google does, since they were granted no rights
whatsoever.

Seems like whatever legal theory the Internet Archive is using must apply to
everyone, including Google, unless Google _waived_ whatever that is.

------
dredmorbius
Author and one of the folks engaged in the G+ Migration / Exodus movement
here.

------
numbfall
I am logged in to so many applications and services I think I can never undo
my trace on the internet. And then there is this archiving of deleted past. I
feel congested.

------
criddell
I've never understood the urge to archive all this old stuff. If you are
somebody that thinks it's important to save as much of this stuff as we can,
I'd love to have my opinion changed. The cost to save everything isn't
trivial, but often it feels like the value is.

~~~
etiam
"Deep Learning" group.

[https://plus.google.com/communities/112866381580457264725](https://plus.google.com/communities/112866381580457264725)

Discussion as methods and questions emerged, often involving the pioneers of
the field. LeCun, Bengio, Krizshevsky, Goodfellow, etc. Ranging from the days
when people were starting to realize you could implement theses thing for a
GPU instead of just CPU, to days when it's arguably rehabiliteted "A.I." as
credible in the popular imagination and spawned a multi-billion dollar
industry.

Admittedly it's the only thing I'm aware of on G+ which I'm anxious to see
archived, but that's probably mostly for lack of looking. These are
interesting times. It would be a shame if the records of them are lost just
because we put them on a medium which will self-destruct in absence of active
maintenance and then failed to put in the maintenance.

~~~
criddell
Even in that one community, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty terrible.

