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This is about webpage searches, there's still all of social media for spreading word about public service information. Whereas, if a person is wrongly charged w

This is about webpage searches, there's still all of social media for spreading word about public service information. Whereas, if a person is wrongly charged with a crime, should they not at least have a right to not show up in web page searches? No one on social media will want to spread the old, wrong news. So the good the Right to be Forgotten does has no substitute, while what it takes away can be picked up by social media (and search within social media too). That said, I still haven't made up my mind about it.

belovedeagle 11y ago
> No one on social media will want to spread the old, wrong news. You can't be serious. This is exactly what happens all the time with internet hate mobs.
- goldfeld 11y ago
  It's a growing problem, yes, but I see it as a different problem. Social media is by definition people. It's a culture/education problem, because people would spread it on messaging apps (like whatsapp) or even mouth to mouth, so there's seemingly no technological solution to that. It's also easier to discredit information based on who's spreading it. Meanwhile Google is taken as authority on what's relevant. So actually there is something to do with tech we could do: transparent trust chains where you know where information is coming from out of your trusted peers and which trusted peers of theirs. It's very hairy, because trustworthiness in one subject doesn't carry over well in many cases, but maybe machine learning will help us there. That would be a nicer scenario than everyone trusting what Google says should be the most important public things to know about a given person. Even politicians suffer from misinformation spread by opposition, so it's not clear cut even in that case.
bko 11y ago
You assume that the legal system is infallible. I don't think it should purged from the public record or search engines. This whole thing reminds me of 1984, where the government alters events in the past by essentially controlling information. I don't like that people are wrongly charged with a crime either. I think as more information about people becomes made available, our culture will shift to become more permissive as to appropriate behavior. As the sexual revolution brought about attitudes towards personal relationships, I think eventually society will be more forgiving with the information available online about a person.

belovedeagle 11y ago

> No one on social media will want to spread the old, wrong news. You can't be serious. This is exactly what happens all the time with internet hate mobs.

goldfeld 11y ago
It's a growing problem, yes, but I see it as a different problem. Social media is by definition people. It's a culture/education problem, because people would spread it on messaging apps (like whatsapp) or even mouth to mouth, so there's seemingly no technological solution to that. It's also easier to discredit information based on who's spreading it. Meanwhile Google is taken as authority on what's relevant. So actually there is something to do with tech we could do: transparent trust chains where you know where information is coming from out of your trusted peers and which trusted peers of theirs. It's very hairy, because trustworthiness in one subject doesn't carry over well in many cases, but maybe machine learning will help us there. That would be a nicer scenario than everyone trusting what Google says should be the most important public things to know about a given person. Even politicians suffer from misinformation spread by opposition, so it's not clear cut even in that case.

bko 11y ago

You assume that the legal system is infallible. I don't think it should purged from the public record or search engines. This whole thing reminds me of 1984, where the government alters events in the past by essentially controlling information. I don't like that people are wrongly charged with a crime either. I think as more information about people becomes made available, our culture will shift to become more permissive as to appropriate behavior. As the sexual revolution brought about attitudes towards personal relationships, I think eventually society will be more forgiving with the information available online about a person.