When Google first announced its plans to shut down G+, originally slated for August 2019, a few of us started looking at the question of helping people and communities (in both the technical "G+ Community", and the social "community of people" senses) keep intact.

For all the ribbing G+ gets, the problem is a big one. And it's not one that's specific to Google+. As the regular parade of shut-down announcements of services and firms on HN attests, online mediated services can be cancelled, often quite abruptly. And there's often very little notice.

The world of social media sites is likely to go through more shakeups, for various reasons (and there are a number of sites presently looking pretty shaky), while the options for alternative provisioning of similar services (and the question of whether what we now call "social media" really is a net positive or something people want, need, or even should use) either personally or at a more local scale (though through what institutions isn't entirely clear) is a possibility. Projects such as IndieWeb, the POSSE initiative ("post on (your own) server, syndicate elsewhere"), federated protocols, IPFS, DAT, Beaker browser, and more (I've been discovering a lot in the past six months) may break us out of the current proprietary silo model.

Or not. The technical landscape is confusing, technical skills are limited, and the risks of DiY hosting can be large. It's a difficult trade-off. Though it's one I'd like to explore.

There are huge changes that have and will be happening on the regulatory front, from privacy to copyright to liability to propaganda and disinformation, and far more. Some of these laws and regulation seem written with self-service in mind, many do not. That's a whole 'nother field.

(I've got a To-Do item to get ahold of the EFF on these questions, as well as other groups.)

And then there's the whole fact that the tech world is in the midst of a (very well deserved IMO) backlash for its cavalier attitudes abuses and outright harm inflicted on both individuals and society as a whole. The promise of the 1990s has not been delivered.

Back to the group: we looked at the problem of migrating, realised there were many different users and groups, with different interests, and a wide range of technical abilities, from top-tier Linux kernel hackers (Alan Cox) to none at all. Some are best served by commercial solutions, for now, but many can look at federated or self-service options. We put together FAQs and Wikis and discussion forums and gathered a lot of data (we seem to have the best information outside Google on the actual size and scope of G+ users, data, and communities), and more. All inside six months.

It's been a group effort, and a lot of people contributed. I need to dig through my G+ archives to find the thank yous I'd posted earlier today, but it's substantial, and that was only a partial list.

What I hope is that others can use and be helped by what we've done.

The wiki is https://social.antefriguserat.de and there's a subreddit at https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus Both will continue to be active over coming months, we're only part-way through the process, and still need to establish ourselves in our new spaces.