The Internet Archive to save Google+ public posts before it shuts down

Google is all set to start deleting data from its unpopular and flopped social network, Google+ in April onwards, but before that get started; the Internet Archive and the ArchiveTeam say that they have already started working to safeguard public posts on the platform before they get fade away forever.

The sites announced in a post on Reddit that they had begun to archive the posts using scripts to back up and capture the data in an effort to preserve it. The teams say that they can only work on the posts that are presently available to the public: they won't be able to preserve posts that are marked as private or have already been deleted.

They insist people delete their accounts who don't want their content to be archived and showed to a procedure to request the removal of content in specific. They also told that they won't be able to capture everything: comment threads will have a limit up to 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.

Google made an announcement in October last year that it would shutter the social media service after a major security issue came to light that exposed user data. At that time, it observed that the service had "low usage and engagement" from users and that most sessions lasted only up to 5 seconds.

After exposure of a second security violation, Google moved up its timeline to close down the service, and earlier this year it announced that it would begin deleting consumer data on April 2nd. In the month of February, Google shut down the ability to create new profile pages and communities.

The two teams Tumblr and Flickr have a motto to preserve parts of the internet for people to look at in the future, and refer to their efforts to save content from websites before they get extinct. The Archive's website claims, "Our mission is to provide universal access to all knowledge."