Menoducational - updating knowledge

You may think that going into an 'etherwobblies' post this close to Christmas is harsh and rash. It has been brought about due to some disturbing news. Pay attention all you G+ users.

First the menoloop (rant). From the changes brought about in May due to EU stuff, the connection between blogs and G+ dropped out. It has meant that I have had to sit down every evening and manually link the posts over to my G+ profile page. Not particularly onerous, really, but just another thing to think about when am making my dinner...

The boffins have also been tinkering, as they are prone to do, and some of the things on the plus dashboard began to disappear. The alert began to get suspicious. Another thing that began to happen was fluctuations in 'followers'. Yes there are those who will add and 'unadd' one at will, but that wasn't what bothered me. It was the difference within Plus itself. It can't seem to agree, showing one number on the blogs, one on the Plus header, then another one on the main collections page. Now let me be clear. I am NOT hung up on counting coup, desirous of being 'viral' or any such thing. However, I DO like consistency and transparency and it has been getting more and more obvious that the Plus platform had issues.

That ends the personal menoloop. Now for the general news which all of you who utilise G+ need to be aware of and make sure you think ahead.

Google is closing it down. In April 2019. Yup. Read it for yourself.

In case you don't want to wade through the journalese on that link, the key points are;
❝G have been using Project Strobe this year to assess privacy and security matters. It brought to light a security risk relating to APIs**
G state that privacy and security are their priority and whilst over 50k users may have been exposed to API developers, it states that...

• The bug did not give developers access to information such as financial data, national identification numbers, passwords, or similar data typically used for fraud or identity theft.
• No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the developers who inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.

G note that their users appear to desire different things and that the Plus platform is very 'low usage'. Users, it seems, now require more 'end control'. ❞

Some figures seen indicate that despite the number of users with G+ profiles, only about 10% are accessing the platform for more than a few minutes per day. Google's attempt to steal consumer load from the book of faces has, even by their own words, fizzled.

Okay, so what now? Well, for those of us who actually liked the platform and who, for various reasons, make it their only 'social' space, this is a tad frustrating. Only a tad though. For, you see, those of us who did use it thusly were doing so because we really, truly, did not wish to be part of any facings, whistlings, instathings or snap/whateries. In short, not particularly social in the electronic sense. (OR, in a few cases, were booted off other social platforms for 'poor hygiene' and could get away with it in G+.) Anyway. We have to make choices now. What you do is entirely up to you. Here is my thinking at this stage - bearing in mind that with the speed of change as such, it is entirely possible that by the time one has implemented anything, it will all have shifted yet again. It is almost certain that there will be some form of alternative given, but probably not in relation to the connectivity of blogs and that is where my priority lies.

On discovering this news during my geeky research day last weekend, the first thing I though about was changing my Blogger profile back to the traditional. I got this.

A couple of hours later... or more. I spent a lot of time trying to catch up with Google, as I hadn't really been paying attention over the summer - and then there was the wrist fiasco to keep me diverted. A lot happens in six months in etherland. Turns out there are ways to reclaim all your online stuff via Google Takeout. Before you go downloading everything though, consider this - you need sufficient storage, be that on your native machine or in the cloud. Also, not everything listed is pertinent. Best action would be to deselect the lot then only select one thing at a time... but, frankly, why bother? Most of the stuff offered for archiving here is not particularly important. The archived stuff is not in plain English, but formats such as JSON and Atom.

This 'takeout' is going to be useful to high-end users and business who must keep records of everything and who are moving into paperless operating.

For the rest of us, this archiving methodology is not really necessary. Blogs can be backed up within Blogger itself. Or, as many do, through use of book creations such as Blog2Print. Gmail backup can be done through services such as UpSafe. Photos are anyway sent to Album Archive.

Back to point. To change back to Blogger profile, one will have to again create one, as the previous would have been deleted when swapping to G+. This was the case originally, but as already stated - change. Also, there come up warnings about things which will 'disappear' when deleting one's G+ profile. Looking closely though, most of it doesn't matter. It just looks scary.

It is fair to say, though, that I AM reluctant because quite a lot of my viewing traffic entered via the G+ page, but if it is going, then one must deal with it. I posted on my G+ profile in order to alert folk who use that avenue that there will be a need to change how they approach things also. If they are genuine, there ought to be no problem committing to joining the blogs as followers, or bookmarking the URLs. On this side, one must adjust to the likelihood of much less traffic. I will not be deleting my G+ profile immediately - have given notice in that profile post that it will be at the end of January.

I don't blog for any reason other than pleasure. It is a hobby, albeit a serious one. It does not generate income and neither does it seek to 'influence' (over and above normal conversational opinionation!) Those folk whom I have followed via G+ myself, I will be going directly to their blogs.

...so why is there a little tiny pout when I say that these changes are afoot? Picking away at the soft scab it is discovered that it is the lack of control.  The foot-stamping toddler upset at having a favoured toy removed for no apparent reason. The irony is, this will actually have an effect of taking back control. Indeed, many of the changes mooted for Google are about handing some of the control of content and how it is used back to the end user as there is a move now to 'decentralize'. There is the additional twist that we here in Europe are going to have our very own Google base in Ireland - all to do with the regulations which came about earlier this year and more which are pending. It will be interesting to see if that has further effects upon our process. They are not perfect, far from it. However, Google are now rather like the Reserve Bank. We can operate all around it, but never without it.

Keep your eyes peeled. Watch for change - and prepare for it if you are on G+ yourself.

**APIs - coding which you don't see but which enables servers to talk to each other and integrate info about you. It is seen when you book a trip, say, and then Google knows when and where and keeps alerts for you. It is the sort of thing that apps might ask your permission to view when you seek to download them...