If you still use Yahoo Groups, get ready to save your stuff. Yahoo will remove all content on the discussion board site on Dec. 14.
The change was quietly mentioned on a Yahoo Help page. "As of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed," it reads.
The shutdown, however, starts on Oct. 21, when users will no longer be able to upload new content to the site. The Verizon-owned Yahoo also plans on shutting down a whole host of features on Yahoo Groups, including the ability to post files, polls, links, photos, folders, calendars, and more.
So OF COURSE Yahoo! is going to stop allowing use of Yahoo! Groups in exactly one week, and OF COURSE Yahoo! is going to delete/wipe ALL content in ALL Yahoo! Groups in 3 months. And OF COURSE the front page says NOTHING about it. https://t.co/2tNGpt9WoX pic.twitter.com/2U52mPK2ej — Jason Scott (@textfiles) October 16, 2019
"The Yahoo Groups site will continue to exist, however, all public groups will be made private or restricted," the help page adds. "Any new group members will need to request an invite or be invited by an admin. Admins will still be able to manage various group settings, though some functionality will be limited."
In other words, Yahoo Groups will still function as an email list people can continue to use to message each other, but only over email. To save your posted content, the company is advising users to go into their groups' main page, and basically mouse over the content they want to download and save.
Verizon told PCMag: "We are tailoring Groups' features to match the preferences of our Groups members. Most of our members connect and share content primarily over email, so we believe this change will streamline and improve the Groups experience. Yahoo Groups will continue to provide a way for people to connect with their communities around shared interests, and we will continue to listen to feedback to ensure we keep our users happy and safe."
In recent years, Verizon has been shutting down old-school internet services such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and the CompuServe Forums.
The Yahoo Groups site itself is pretty dated with some of the groups founded as far back as 2001 and 1999. Since then, the internet populace has migrated to other social media platforms such as Facebook. According to the Yahoo Groups directory site, many of the created groups appear to be inactive. Nevertheless, the abrupt change has sparked complaints from some existing users of the bulletin board site.