Pashpost - a cautionary tale
In discussing moving our Egyptology Community, the owner and I (Moderator) have discovered that someone has copied and pasted Community information over to pashpost without our knowledge or permission, even down to the rules and cover image. While no Community posts seem to have been copied (yet?), we are currently investigating this further.
I would therefore urge Community owners and members to be vigilant about where their content might be being copied to, and to respectfully ask people to respect the intellectual property of others.
EDIT: In investigating this, Pashpost has now decided I have chosen to "verify" that I want some kind of account with them.
"Many thanks for verifying your PASHpost account – to access your account Sign-in using the details below:
[redacted]"
Any thoughts I might have had regarding moving to this platform are vanishing fast!
UPDATE:
The owner received this via email:
"You will be the owner of the group ASAP.
We’re sorry for not communicating that earlier. Because of the impending shutdown of G+, and at the request of several groups, we made templates of active groups to make it easier for groups to start quickly.
We are very sorry we got off on the wrong foot. We’ll work to regain your confidence and confirm as soon as you are made owner. Thank you for understanding and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to assist in your migration."
The owner is in negotiations with pashpost. See comments on OP.
In discussing moving our Egyptology Community, the owner and I (Moderator) have discovered that someone has copied and pasted Community information over to pashpost without our knowledge or permission, even down to the rules and cover image. While no Community posts seem to have been copied (yet?), we are currently investigating this further.
I would therefore urge Community owners and members to be vigilant about where their content might be being copied to, and to respectfully ask people to respect the intellectual property of others.
EDIT: In investigating this, Pashpost has now decided I have chosen to "verify" that I want some kind of account with them.
"Many thanks for verifying your PASHpost account – to access your account Sign-in using the details below:
[redacted]"
Any thoughts I might have had regarding moving to this platform are vanishing fast!
UPDATE:
The owner received this via email:
"You will be the owner of the group ASAP.
We’re sorry for not communicating that earlier. Because of the impending shutdown of G+, and at the request of several groups, we made templates of active groups to make it easier for groups to start quickly.
We are very sorry we got off on the wrong foot. We’ll work to regain your confidence and confirm as soon as you are made owner. Thank you for understanding and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to assist in your migration."
The owner is in negotiations with pashpost. See comments on OP.
Looks like the vultures are closing in...
ReplyDeleteRon Gavillet Any light you can shed on this?
ReplyDeleteAakheperure MerytsekhmetJose Pina CoelhoFilip H.F. Slagter Thank you for you for raising this Aakherperure. We've apologized to Caroline, and she is now the owner of the group. Pash created several templates of Communities at the request of owners. In light of the time crunch and the dis-assembly occurring (as you outlined Jose) we built out several more and are in the process of notify Communities that they are available. They are not our Groups, they are there ready to be claimed by the owners, moderators and members of Communities. Sorry for any misunderstanding, and we hope to earn your confidence. Thank you. Ron
ReplyDeletePASHpost are operating preemptively to create community archives without prior permission under both time pressure and given Google+'s exceedingly poor outreach / contact capabilities, as well as nonresponsiveness of many Community admins.
ReplyDeleteThese are frustrations I've long felt, and Ron Gavillet and I have discussed this several times over past weeks in G+ comments and emails.
The approach is risky and may be seen as offensive; I see this as an unavoidable dilemma. Greater openness may smooth edges and soften feelings. Offering to provide export data to the Community owner / moderator and possibly members' choice of platform or data format might help as well.
(Note that clearly identifying community owners/leads off Google+ is itself difficult.)
There are over 8.1 million G+ communities, and over 100,000 with 100+ members and posting activity in to 30 days preceeding Jan 6-7, 2019, of which I have a summary dataset and have shared name, URL, and member count with several others, including PASHpost. Contacting these through G+ simply has not been possible. Google themselves shut down the official Community forums months ago -- one with no prior notice, one for six weeks before bothering to mention the fact, further thwarting outreach. The Google+ Help community has been of limited use for various reasons.
We're up against a hard wall, direct obstruction from Google, and and some mix of apathy, being overwhelmed, lack of coordination, and/or skillsets, among G+ community leads. There are no unambiguously good options.
This has been my own biggest frustration in the Migration/Exodus process, and what I consider the least successful element to date.
Note that The Internet Archive will also likely be capturing much public G+ content, including Communities.
We may want to suggest changes to some of PASHpost's practices and procedures, but I, speaking personally, endorse what they and Ron Gavillet are doing. Let's work with them, or if not interested, opt out.
Edward Morbius Better said than I. Thank you Edward.
ReplyDeleteThese Group templates were created this week in order to preserve Communities and ease migration; they are ready to be claimed by the owners, moderators and members of Communities. We will be notifying Communities next week of their availability (provided of course we can get through the G+ filters).
If you know of a Community that should be included, please let us know. Here is a link to Groups on PashPost. pashpost.com - Groups List
Further notes: I've been going back and forth with Ron Gavillet over the past day or two strongly encouraging PASHpost to put up a clear "About" page and statement.
ReplyDeleteThe first incentive was just for me to be able to be able to clearly describe it on #PlexodusReddit and #PlexodusWiki (I've ... not really been able to, see: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/aqotl0/pashpost_topicoriented_discussion/)
But another very useful function would be to head off concerns such as the ones raised in this thread.
On how PASHpost might want to position itself: Creating preemptive archives as a general community service and offering to either re-export those elsewhere or host them on PASH itself if claimed by the community could be a better option. Offering to transfer the contents to the Internet Archive as well might be an option. (I've had talks with the ArchiveTeam of similar suggestions for other projects.)
In general, do NOT create accounts or representations of people or organisations without their specific approval, and do not represent that you are acting on their behalf or for their benefit without specific approval. The Brave browser has run up against this error in representing itself as working on behalf of authors, as have several earlier projects and start-ups. Many moons ago I received an email telling me an account had been created on my behalf by some new start-up. I responded with a legal demand letter. Unilaterally acting for others is very dicey.
Being as absolutely clear of your intent, actions, and *who is behind a project** also helps.
*A note on myself, personal conflicts of interest, and relationships to projects, sites, and companies. I've taken pains not to accept payment or become formally attached to projects (one exception, below) in the course of the Plexodus / G+ Mass Migration, and will not do so. Ron isn't the first person to have suggested this, a few weeks ago. I refused him and others on the basis that it's far more important for me to maintain independence and integrity, and to be able to speak without conflict on specific tools and platforms. I have and will communicate with projects and firms where that seems useful and beneficial to the aim of helping people and communities migrate off G+, and have received and shared information (most especially on G+ user and community activity). The 8.1 million Communities dataset created Jan 5-6, 2019 I've been working with and posting results from time to time came from Alois Bělaška / Friends+Me, with permission both to share results and credit him/them as the source.
(I've also created my own smaller, sample-based data to work with, but Alois's ability to crawl massive portions of G+ rapidly have proved hugely valuable.)
The advantage being that I can speak freely about the positives or negatives of services as they become apparent to me without either fiduciary or contractual (e.g., NDA) conflicts. This cat values his independence.
The exception is the Darcy Project which I've been working with (or more accurately over the past few weeks: mostly ignoring due to other pressures, Plexodus and personal). That is not an immediate target or platform however, and should not be a significant player in the near term. Christian Buggedei provides the server on which #PlexodusWiki (https://social.antefriguserat.de) runs, and heads the Darcy Project. To date, that's been informal, with no compensation or contractual basis. See: https://darcy.is/
old.reddit.com - PASHpost: Topic-oriented discussion
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Very constructive feedback. We’ll revert to reaching out to Community owners and not creating a template until requested. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteRon Gavillet If you're not already talking to someone about copyright and trademark law, possibly also misuse of likeness (various US and state law within the US, EU and other law can also apply), you probably should. Keep in mind that most lawyers are highly risk-averse.
ReplyDeleteGroups such as the Internet Archive or EFF might also be able to help you.
There are defences (though not "exceptions", as is popularly described) under US copyright law for "fair use" exemptions, with a specific four-element test. It may be possible for you to create and post notice of communities for which you've prepared templates or archives, but not publicly post the archives themselves. That would tend to skirt the ground between legal risk of copyright or other infringement and of irrecoverable data and community loss.
The role of increasing and rapidly changing privacy regulations as regards all of this is ... a whole 'nother can of worms, and one I'm utterly out of my depth in.
Edward Morbius Thank you Edward, but it seems waiting to create the templates until requested by the owners makes the most sense so we don’t have any misunderstandings. That’s the approach we’ll follow. Thank you again for the constructive suggestions. Ron
ReplyDeleteRon Gavillet an alternative could be to keep the data private till requested.
ReplyDeleteI would also highly recommend you to add PASHpost as a visible nickname to your account name, as well as a profile picture that clearly shows PASHpost, as that should make finding your account in the plus-mention list easier. I had to plus mention you by account number, as I had troubles remembering your name, and for some reason only a lowercase version without profile pic was showing up in the plus-mention list while typing in your name manually.
Plus-mentioning on G+ has never been great...
Filip H.F. Slagter Thank you; will do asap.
ReplyDeleteI'll second the "private until requested" option. Given the constraints we're facing, it seems a best possible course.
ReplyDeleteAakheperure Merytsekhmet has this issue been resolved to your / your Community owner's satisfaction?
ReplyDeleteFilip H.F. Slagter Edward Morbius thanks for taking up the cause on this one!
ReplyDeleteThe owner received this via email:
"You will be the owner of the group ASAP.
We’re sorry for not communicating that earlier. Because of the impending shutdown of G+, and at the request of several groups, we made templates of active groups to make it easier for groups to start quickly.
We are very sorry we got off on the wrong foot. We’ll work to regain your confidence and confirm as soon as you are made owner. Thank you for understanding and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to assist in your migration."
I'd had a brief look at this platform because I had been considering it but you can imagine our concern about a platform that slurps data from Google in such a wholesale manner then apologises later.
The owner is rather more forgiving than me and is attempting (with limited success) to migrate some content to the site. The owner is in email consultation with pashpost regarding the technical issues which are probably not relevant to this discussion, other than to note the platform is unsuitable for the Community at the time of writing.
Once again, thank you for your invaluable support, as many content creators simply don't have the technical skills to cope with a Google shut down without a great deal of assistance.
Edward Morbius You have a lot of good points there, which really need to start following ASAP.
ReplyDeleteRon "PASHpost" Gavillet As I received emails to my work account about the Egyptology Community, it certainly felt like I was being phished. The website is very minimal - there is no information about what the website is, what it's for, who owns it, no company details or contact details (just a form), etc. There are also no instructions on how to migrate information from Google Plus Communities to PASHPost. And so, the emails were dealt with as spam. But, as previously mentioned, we were quite shocked to find that much of the framework of the Egyptology community was on your site.
Now that I've been made Admin of the template, I've attempted to have a play around with the system, and have a few issues - eg. none of the links I've posted are clickable and no preview appears, and a few other issues that I've emailed people about. I'm also still surprised that there are no instructions on how to migrate your Google-generated .zip file/s of the Community onto PASHPost.
Filip H.F. Slagter Thanks for checking. We're still not yet decided because of the way this whole situation went down. We'll have to see how PASHPost go about fixing their formatting issues and whatnot. But I'm willing to consider it. Aakheperure Merytsekhmet and I will have to discuss what is best for the Community.
Caroline Murphy Aakheperure Merytsekhmet good to hear at least that there's a conversation going, and that an attempt at a solution is at least being worked on. :)
ReplyDeleteAakheperure Merytsekhmet would you mind editing your initial post with an update to reflect this? This would be especially helpful to provide context in case people decide to reshare your post.
Filip H.F. Slagter Added the response to the OP, not sure the best format to do an update, please advise if not appropriate.
ReplyDeleteAakheperure Merytsekhmet Looks fine to me :) Much appreciated!
ReplyDelete