5 ms·
Ask HN: How to find results removed from Google under 'right to be forgotten'?
Hello,
I'm a journalist looking for a way to identify results removed under EU law. I'd like a big set of pages to search/analyse.
I'm struggling to get my head around how to do this. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears!
- biot 10y agoHow about: don't? Your time to report on it was when it was online. If someone has something removed under a right to be forgotten, reporting on that pretty much violates that right, no?
- danso 10y agoThe right to be forgotten is not a global right. OP could be from a country where courts have not made that ruling.
- biot 10y agoI'm speaking more to the ethics than the legal technicalities.
- danso 10y agoI wouldn't call it a technicality. It's a very difficult issue that could have far-reaching effects on technology and information systems. Currently, many media outlets and Google choose to publish and link to copious amounts of disturbing information and images regarding the Tiananmen Square protests, despite the government of the world's most populous country arguing it to be taboo. I doubt those invested in the issue think that publishing on the topic involves mere legal technicalities. That said, the EU's right to be forgotten applies to search engines. Not to anyone else. That's why, as someone posted elsewhere, the BBC is able to publish a list of links that have been blacklisted by Google because of the ruling.
- hobs 10y agoThere are definitely reasons to support hiding information, but the simple act of it being hidden does not make it immoral if you bring it to light. It is trivial to form the moral argument for the opposite argument: say I am a corporation (for instance DOW Chemical) and I have a right of personhood in my country, remove negative articles about me from the internet. If a judge orders it Google will do it, they dont make a moral argument back to a court order(generally), and at that point you have taken critical information away from the greater public (say, that the corp is poisoning people.)
- int_19h 10y agoThe right to be forgotten is not recognized as a universal right from the ethical perspective, either.
- foobar000001 10y agoMaybe don't be such a slimy shithead?
- sctb 10y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively here. We ban accounts that continue to post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- FatAmericanDev 10y agoWouldn't that be in opposition to the spirit of the law, if they just moved the removed results to a second search engine?
- robryk 10y agoE.g. BBC publishes/used to publish the list of their pages that were removed from Google search results for this reason: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d765aa8-600b-4f32-b110-d02fbf7fd379 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d765aa8-600b-4f... Not sure if there's any more recent version of that page.
- 9NRtKyP4 10y agoThere is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8f2dd88f-db8a-4683-acbb-cc3b1124c4ad http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8f2dd88f-db8a-46...
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoThat's really interesting that they publish that information. The top of the list is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6965657.stm; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6965657.stm; presumably any of the people mentioned, including in the comments, might be responsible for the right-to-be-forgotten request to Google. What's more curious, to me, is that several of the BBC's list are references to a series of articles on 3 students, eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3500850.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3500850.stm. Now if you Google any of those 3 students, https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"nikki+holman" https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"nikki+ho... then that page, that BBC say is hidden in Google SERPs, appears?? Did someone mess up. Google does say "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe.", however. Similarly, this page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4747988.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4747988.stm is listed on that BBC page, but searching the main name and "BBC" brings up that same page as the first result; again the "Some results may have been removed [...]" text is given. Bit weird?
- danso 10y agohttps://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/faq/?hl=en#provide_detailed_stats https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europepri... > Can you provide more detailed statistics about the nature of these requests and removals? > We have provided statistics about the scale of our delisting process—updated daily—since October 2014 in this Transparency Report and have added anonymised examples of delisting decisions to provide color. Additional data on common material factors is available for download here. We continue to explore ways to provide more transparency into delisting decisions in an operationally efficient manner and with due regard to the sensitive and private nature of the requests.
- Retr0spectrum 10y agoPlease use the data that you gather responsibly. There are some people who abuse the system (who I hope you identify), and also some people who really should have the right to be forgotten. As far as I can tell, using a US based VPN/proxy does not censor results - at least, it does not show the message. Therefore, you just need to cross-reference the results from different geographic regions. However, it will be difficult to tell whether a certain result is missing due to censorship, or the fact that result rankings are slightly different for different countries. Once you find a "suspicious" result, I guess you could try searching direct quotes from the article - If it doesn't show up in those results, then it's probably censored. This process will need to be automated, if you want to check every name.
- matt4077 10y ago> Once you find a "suspicious" result, I guess you could try searching direct quotes from the article I believe google only removes the results from searches for the specific name. The page can still show up if you search for something else. Other than that: +1 for your request for responsibility. I disagree with the court ruling, but having the right to publish some information doesn't always mean it's a good idea. Google has details on a few specific requests. They include "high-ranking corrupt politician" (not removed) as well as "stalking victim's home address" (removed).
- pitaj 10y agoHonestly, I don't understand how anybody can honestly think that there can or should be a "right to be forgotten." These laws are an abomination of freedom of information and are incredibly naive.
- kuschku 10y agoLet me just publish articles full of libel and lies claiming you distribute child porn in a country without libel laws. Let’s see what you do when the first result in Google for your name is such lies. Or when things you did in your childhood are all Google results about you, and might make you fail to get a job. The whole point of the Right to be Forgotten is to solve such issues which can’t be solved otherwise.
- extra88 10y agoThere are already libel laws to address lies much more thoroughly than making Google's job harder. So-called right to be forgotten laws are as futile as DRM. I believe culturally we will adapt to the availability of this information. We can change our opinions about whether evidence of poor choices a long time ago means a candidate would be a poor hire. But the information still being available allows us to make more informed choices because maybe those poor choices a long time ago, along with more recent information, is relevant. The candidate knows this evidence exists and can contextualize it and/or compensate for it with evidence of better, more recent choices.
- Retr0spectrum 10y ago> in a country without libel laws. It may be slightly futile, but I do believe it's a step in the right direction.
- ddebernardy 10y agoApplying libel laws are very theoretical on the internet. Joe is not going to sue Jack at the other end of the world in practice because of the outsized costs and efforts involved.
- 10y ago
- malux85 10y agoPut some contact info in your hacker news profile. I can help you with this, email me
- ch215 10y agoTo clarify, I want to shine a light on results wrongly removed: cases where freedom of expression, and the public interest in remembering, outweighs the right to be forgotten.
- stephengillie 10y agoSo, articles where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
- robinduckett 10y agoSounds a bit like fascism to me
- abro 10y agoTo the best of my knowledge: you cannot. (I'm an EU-based SEO. I don't know everything, but i might be a good source.) Most of the search queries that contain human names will be marked as "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe." no matter wether a removal really happened or not. Afais this is the "best" data you get from Google for this topic: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/ https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europepri... When you look at the other transparency reports you'll notice that you're able to search through other types of removed results (e.g. copyright violations), but that this is not possible in the right to be forgotten area. [Edit] But you could ask any big newspaper Website for help. They receive a notice in their Search Console when a result is taken down.
- amelius 10y agoYou can search for phrases such as "Unfortunately, the page we linked to was removed because of EU law". This will not give you the page itself though.
- pokoleo 10y agoYou're looking for Lumen[0] (formerly, Chilling Effects) From Wikipedia[1]: > The archive got a boost when Google began submitting its notices in 2002. Google began to do so in response to the publicity generated when the Church of Scientology convinced Google to remove references and links to an anti-Scientology web site, Operation Clambake, in April 2002. [0] https://lumendatabase.org/ https://lumendatabase.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(website)