November 2015: the new Google+ desktop interface no longer uses these symbols. When you join a Google+ Community, the default is for new posts to the community to appear in your home stream. If you are a member of a lot of communities - or just one very popular one - that can flood your stream with posts. How can you tell the source of a post? In the upper right corner there will be a green Google+ Communities symbol . Fortunately it's easy to changes community settings so the posts don't appear in your Home stream. If the symbol in the upper right corner looks like a flame it's a What's Hot and Recommended post. You can also prevent What's Hot posts from appearing in your stream . It's just a few simple steps to disable community posts in your stream on either a desktop computer or the Google+ app:
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