Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forgotten at Google

Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by TangoTrotFox on Monday February 26, 2018 @11:36PM (#16471105)

The article omits what I think is probably the most important datum: '0.2% of requesters accounted for 20.8% of all accepted delistings. Many of these frequent requesters were individuals using law firms and reputation management services.' That's a total of about 214,000 URLS deleted on account of 1000 individuals. The most prolific requester requested 5,768 URLs relating them be removed. It's unstated how many of these were approved.

The sort of individuals using law firms and reputation management services to try to erase information about themselves from public access, are generally going to be the individuals whose information has the most probable public utility. But they're also the individuals who can most threaten Google with lawsuits and other difficulties should they not comply.

The internet is something that will live on long after we're all dead, and it is creating a living chronicle of the times. The more this chronicle is interfered with, the less valuable this information will be. Einstein's 'marital demands' [1] (not what you might think) of his wife would almost certainly fall within this 'right to be forgotten' yet they now provide a all too rare glimpse at the less 'sculptured' life of one of the most important figures in history. This yin and yang, good and bad, nature of people helps provide a more balanced, and less idealistic view of actors in the past - and present.

Perhaps the thing becoming ever more clear is that search is something that needs to be decentralized. It's all too easy for the player in control to exploit the data for their own personal benefit, and they also end up working as a single point of failure for access to said information.

[1] - http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-o...

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by probably_wrong on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @07:52AM (#16472927)

> The internet is something that will live on long after we're all dead, and it is creating a living chronicle of the times. The more this chronicle is interfered with, the less valuable this information will be.

The primary sources are still available, aren't they? It's only the Google result that is removed. Future historians could store everything and run their own search engines on top of that.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by wmf on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @01:54AM (#16471572)

Maybe Google can "unforget" after people die.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by hobofan on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @05:42AM (#16472399)

Does the right to privacy end with death?

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by PeterisP on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @06:10AM (#16472498)

While not an absolute, in general, yes, it's a legal doctrine that quite a few privacy issues and certain rights do end with death.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by Paul-ish on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @11:29AM (#16474972)

What harms could happen to someone who is dead?

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by ocdtrekkie on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @12:40PM (#16475805)

You can most definitely harm the family of the dead person.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by Paul-ish on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @02:20PM (#16476885)

They should send their own request in. The request should be evaluated with respect to the living individual's circumstance, without regard to the deceased.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by IntronExon on Monday February 26, 2018 @11:58PM (#16471176)

The internet is something that will live on long after we're all dead

Yup, but how much of what’s online today will? Bitrot kills, and it seems like a lot of today’s content will be gone long before we are. By conflating the net with the content you’ve avoided that key issue.

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by TangoTrotFox on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @01:31AM (#16471484)

I think there is a substantial difference in things that are, let's say, naturally 'forgotten' versus things that powers that be attempt to force society to 'forget.' I completely agree with you that bitrot is a major issue, but it's a different issue with different resolutions. And it's fortunate that there are a number of sites making some remarkable effort to preserve the internet including organizations like the Internet Archive. However, might these sort of rules eventually make it unlawful for the Internet Archive to even allow users to search their archive for certain things that governments decide ought be forgotten? This all just feels as though we're inching towards dystopia.

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As a related aside, one tool I think people should really use much more often is date filtering in searching. This [1] is a search on google for 'Iraq' from January-March 1 2003. The US would invade Iraq on March 20th. All of those results are 15+ years old now. I'm sure much has been lost to time, but fortunately there is also a lot that has not.

[1] - https://www.google.com/search?tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3AJanuary...

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Re:Insights on the First Three Years of the Right to Be Forg... by throwaway2048 on Monday February 26, 2018 @11:45PM (#16471123)

Einstein was a highly public figure, its unlikely that such things would be removed from public view, or a lawsuit to such effect would be winnable.

Information parties like Google has goes far beyond what you see publicly, and its not being retained for your benefit, its being retained for Google's, and Google's and your goals are not in alignment.

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