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A curiosity regarding disappearing Google+ posts

Originally shared by Edward Morbius

A curiosity regarding disappearing Google+ posts

As part of the Google+ Exodus (#Plexodus) effort, I and others have been reaching out to Google+ communities. Site mechanics make this difficult, and while it would be helpful to be able to, say, contact and pitch mods beforehand, that is at best tedious. G+ lacks numerous useful community tools, and a "message the mods" tool is among them. Even direct messaging is tedious at best (find user, strip to ID, use the tagging method.

So I'd dropped a few posts which have been removed by mods as off-topic or spam.

That is not the problem.

Moderators have the prerogative to manage their communities as they see fit. Several have since joined the Google+ Mass Migration G+MM discussion.

The posts themselves remain accessible, though, through the Google+ platform, by URL.

One such removed post is here:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/GPAF4Pn5npd

Note that it remains visible, though unlisted within the community itself.


What is unusual is for a post to disappear entirely, as here:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/GgW7737ueuZ

There's one crucial distinction between these two posts: one was to an ordinary G+ community, the other to a Google-specific channel.

I've long credited Google for standing up to my frequent criticisms of the company (and credit where due) without censoring me. I've commented on this sseversl times since the G+ sunset announcement. Individual Googlers may have muted or blocked me, again, their prerogative. Several notably did not, and I've thougght the more of them for this. But I've never seen my content specifically removed from the platform.

Until today.


Also offsite:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/9wi6sg/a_curiosity_regarding_disappearing_google_posts/
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/9wi6sg/a_curiosity_regarding_disappearing_google_posts/

Comments

  1. You never had in your gmail auto-messages like "your content with id base64-something was removed for violation of guidelines" ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Arioch The Not this time. That's appeared before for (false positive) spam flagging.

    The removal appears to be outside the flagging / automated spam-removal process.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Edward Morbius i see. Sadly that content id does not translate into URL so i did not know what exactly was shadowbanned

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've had content disappear in the past, probably usually because of some type of user side reporting, or so I've assumed. I wouldn't read anything nefarious into it other than automation doing what it does best/worst.

    It's been discussed in various places before but I haven't seen much resolution especially since the post is gone and they cant seem to find it to investigate.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Right; when such posts are removed from a community by a moderator, they are simply disassociated from the community, they are not deleted from g+. They remain accessible by all normal means, including being listed under the author's profile.

    ReplyDelete
  6. wara zashi There's some associated activity and response specific to this case.

    Also evidence. I'm hoping the matter resolves without more drama than necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Arioch The Wouldn't that imply the content has been completely removed from the G+ system? Do you have any information on how that works?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Edward Morbius no. I think they did it intentionally, so formally they did alert user, but in the way user can not deduce any information usable for him

    ReplyDelete
  9. Arioch The There's an API lookup tool.

    ReplyDelete
  10. How many times was that particular material posted in different communities verbatim?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Eric Bright I believe it was posted to four posted to one, reshared to three others: G+MM, of which I'm mod, P:TBiN, of which I'm owner, the G+ RPG Escape Rocket, which I'm a contributor to and working with its mod team, including cross-posting content for visability on a cooperative basis, and Google+ Help.

    I'd also posted it to specific collections of mine, two; Plexodus, specific to G+ exodus matters, and Plexology and Plusology, which addresses Google matters generally appears I didn't previously.

    As noted: removal by mods, or normal automated spam removal is one thing. This appears to be different from either: the content has been specifically disappeared.

    Curiously, a text search turns up only one of those:
    https://plus.google.com/s/"From%20a%20dead%20start%2C%20there's%20been%20some%20fairly%20impressive%20progress%20on%20numerous%20fronts.%20Among%20those"/top

    The set should be:

    Plexodus collection:
    https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/UsjAori5NN4v

    G+MM:
    https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/JFqzxiq6Crx

    P:TBiN:
    https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/Ss2DGj2EAim

    And the disappeared instance:
    https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/GgW7737ueuZ

    ReplyDelete
  12. Edward Morbius yeah, there probably is. But it should not had been devel tool, it should had been end user function, and one documented and one known in Support forums...

    ReplyDelete
  13. Eric Bright Your emoji doesn't register here.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Algorithms might have been set up to totally block repeated posts if they are reported as spam, preventing them from even registering in the first place. Only a guess.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Eric Bright This seems to be other than that.

    ReplyDelete
  16. And expanding: the posts are being removed from (moderated) and then apparently system-deleted from Google+ entirely after being posted to the Google+ Help community.

    We've been trying to work with G+H mods with little luck, see John Lewis's post here:
    https://plus.google.com/103416921442200060388/posts/AhymUHNz9ow
    plus.google.com - UPDATE : They deleted the comment. I'm extremely disappointed with them. You...

    ReplyDelete
  17. Something fishy going on in the G+ community.

    ReplyDelete

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