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Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

• darawk 9y ago
  Seems pretty journalistic to me. This "right to be forgotten" seems incredibly dangerous to me. Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Do we give child molesters the right for their crimes to be forgotten? Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? EDIT: I should point out, I do understand the other side. People shouldn't be punished forever for a crime they've already paid their ostensible debt for. However, I think this is a pretty nuanced issue, and a universal 'right to be forgotten' or a blanket "everything about everyone is accessible forever" is probably not the right solution.
  • rileymat2 9y ago
    But it might be safer to start with the right to be forgotten then start outlining exceptions to that, instead of the other way around.
    • landryraccoon 9y ago
      Why is forgetting the default instead of remembering? You assume that it's better for all of us if we default forget, but that's probably not how you treat your own information, or what you know about others. Isn't more transparency a good thing? Do the government, public figures, elected figures, law enforcement, your doctor and those who provide you medical care have the right to force you to forget everything about them?
      • algem 9y ago
        so when you forgive someone you never forget? Sure you list some good examples to remember but there are far more reasons to forget. To remember should be meaningful. Should anything other people believe to be bad always be remembered of you? If this was the case everyone would hate everyone.
        • closeparen 9y ago
          Reputation is the foundation of trust. If you can’t use the presence of absence of deragatory records as a signal, you need to be much more conservative in your dealings with people and create upfront constraints, since retroactive accountability isn’t an option.
        • landryraccoon 9y ago
          > when you forgive someone you never forget? I'm sorry, are you arguing that not forgiving governments, elected officials, and people in positions of power and authority (or those seeking such power) is a problem in our society? Like, the US, the country that elected Trump, is having a problem with forgiving/forgetting past transgressions? > but there are far more reasons to forget. If there are that many, why didn't you name them? > If this was the case everyone would hate everyone. Hate isn't the issue. We're talking about real world problems with consequences. Evil doesn't just go away because you forgive it, people who are harmed are still harmed, and costs incurred need to be paid. If you just forgive and forget naively, that means the people who are hurt just keep paying, over and over. And the people who take advantage of it just keep winning forever.
        • _rpd 9y ago
          Perhaps those who wish to be 'forgotten' should obtain permission from those that they have injured.
  • komali2 9y ago
    As I recall from "The man who spent 100,000$ to remove himself from google," the "right to be forgotten" specifically targets falsehoods and lies. So no, Trump's bankruptcies won't be forgotten in this system, but a false accusation of child molestation can be.
    • darawk 9y ago
      But these guys were convicted of these crimes, no? That makes this information that's trying to be removed in this case pretty clearly not a lie. Unless i'm missing something here. I think i'm cautiously in favor of the standard you propose though, if that is indeed the standard.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • pbalau 9y ago
        There were stories about people that spent years in jail, but at some point new evidence was found clearing them. I believe these people deserve the things they were wrongly accused of, to be forgotten.
    • skylark 9y ago
      I think the "right to be forgotten" law has larger scope than that actually, although I'm definitely not a lawyer. > After a request is filled, their removals team reviews the request, weighing "the individual's right to privacy against the public's right to know", deciding if the website is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
      • GunlogAlm 9y ago
        Seems sensible to me.
      • vogre 9y ago
  • kuschku 9y ago
    > Seems pretty journalistic to me. This "right to be forgotten" seems incredibly dangerous to me. Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Do we give child molesters the right for their crimes to be forgotten? Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? The right to be forgotten only extends to people that are not public personalities, and only to facts that either are invalid (with proof), or irrelevant, but potentially harmful (e.g. you might argue that a ban you received on a minecraft server when you were 14yo, but which shows up as first result for your name on Google, would negatively impress employers, without having factual relevance). The right to be forgotten has specifically exemptions for all the cases you mentioned.
    • danShumway 9y ago
      Should the government be able to decide what facts are irrelevant to the public, or too harmful to allow the public to know? You don't think that sets a dangerous precedent for abuse?
      • Dylan16807 9y ago
        > what facts are irrelevant to the public It should be in the form of broad categories, minimizing the risk of abuse. > too harmful to allow the public to know Totally different topic.
      • kuschku 9y ago
        The legislative has made laws which the courts have interpreted for this task since time immortal, and the legislative will make laws which the courts interpret for this task until our civilization ends. So, yes, they should. Without this, no rehabilitation is ever possible, every childhood mistake will affect you in your job.
  • nraynaud 9y ago
    It is not wiped from the historical record. It is about not finding the article at the top if you search the name of the person. The justice system has a perfectly fine systems for storing and expunging criminal records over time, and you can still find the article if you specifically google the event. Child molester is probably the worst example, since they have specific lists, exclusions zones, and warning system attached to their presence, nobody should rely on google to find if their new teacher is a child molester.
  • ballenf 9y ago
    Seems like you're almost asking about others' right to know about a person's past crimes. So I'll ask it: Should I be able to google my children's friends' parents before I let them spend the night over there? I use this case because it wouldn't provide the basis of legal background check and presumably google would be my only source of info. Or does the right to be forgotten not apply to child abuse crimes?
    • megaman22 9y ago
      I mean, it's in the police blotter that's published in the newspaper. Assuming you still have a local newspaper, that is. I'm not specifically aware of whether this is the case, but I would hope that the results of deliberations by criminal courts is public information.
      • kelnos 9y ago
        So you're seriously suggesting that someone should have to go to their local library and wade through years of back issues to see if their child's friend's parents have committed a crime? And also travel to whatever other places they've lived to do the same? All because blah blah right to be forgotten, so google etc. isn't allowed to index the relevant articles? That's absurd.
        • megaman22 9y ago
          That's almost exactly the opposite of what I'm arguing. I'd argue that previously, all of this information was on file, and accessible, and relatively well-known. Google delisting it is the weird, anomalous development.
          • amelius 9y ago
            > all of this information was on file, and accessible, and relatively well-known But there is a big difference between having information at your fingertips in a searchable database, and having to go to a library and do the searching manually. Perhaps google could provide the information after the user solved 1000 captchas :)
  • jbigelow76 9y ago
    Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Removed from google != removed from public record. If google has become our only source of information we are pretty much screwed. If Trump were to have his bankruptcies "forgotten" by google then journalists would still report when relevant since he is a celebrity/(sigh)politician, and any entities considering doing business with him or anyone should be doing proper due diligence. Google CANNOT become our only source of truth. Edit: grammar. Edit 2: My point is about the perception of Google as the only relevance source of information for society. Not a value judgement on the concept of a "right to be forgotten" from any source or surfacer of information.
    • joe_the_user 9y ago
      The post above shows a complete misunderstanding of the issue. "Right to be forgotten" laws apply as much to other sources of information as they do to Google. The discussion has become a bad version of "telephone", people responding to quotes in the parent rather than knowing anything about the issue in question. The question of whether one uses Google or other sources is irrelevant here. Sure, journalists could go to find public records and not be able to be published because of the law (because their article wouldn't be listed etc).
      • joshuamorton 9y ago
        No they don't. They explicitly don't apply to journalism. That's the entire point of this. Right to be forgotten laws don't allow you to censor the intercept (a publication), but do allow you to force aggregators to remove the publication. That's why people try to get things delisted from Google, because they can't get the original publisher to remove them.
        • joe_the_user 9y ago
          Note: I should add "effectively apply" to my above post. If journalist articles can't be found on aggregators, they being effectively censored even if they are allowed to be published. That's the entire point of this. Right to be forgotten laws don't allow you to censor the intercept (a publication), but do allow you to force aggregators to remove the publication. If you can prevent a journalists' article from ever being found, you have effectively censored it. Especially, this would impact a journal outside the "top 100" - Someone could conceivably search the 50 or 100 top publications but after that you need an aggregator. So essentially this would censor journalism. And to my original point, it's not just about Google in particular since the alternative to Google is pretty much some other aggregator.
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    There is a huge gulf between what a public person can do under the right to be forgotten and what a private individual that is not otherwise notable can do.
  • gethesmane 9y ago
    Seems pretty journalistic to me. You might want to think about what the basic definition of "journalism" is, then. And how maintaining a relentlessly detailed, universally accessible dossier on the 1 percent of the population that qualifies as truly notable persons (such as politicians or notorious criminals) -- i.e. what traditional "journalists" do -- is in fact, quite different from ... maintaining such a dossier on everyone, which is what Google does.
    • kelnos 9y ago
      From a legal and censorship standpoint, I absolutely want entities like Google search to be defined as journalists. Just because something falls under a legal classification, it doesn't mean we'd start calling Google search a journalist in colloquial usage.
      • gethesmane 9y ago
        It sounds like you see no problem with selectively manipulating the English language to drum up support for legal outcomes "absolutely want" to happen, then.
        • kelnos 9y ago
          It's not manipulating the English language, though. It's merely interpreting the law in a way that's favorable to someone's particular interest. As I said, no one would seriously start calling Google a "journalist" in colloquial usage. Calling them a "journalist" in a legal sense is an entirely different thing, and legal definitions of things are already often unintuitive from a "pure English" sense.
      • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        The issue is that Google claims to be a "journalist" when it thinks it prevents them from having to do what they don't want to do (delist things), and then claims to be "just a platform" when it thinks it prevents them from having to do what they don't want to do (take responsibility for content on their platforms). Google wants it both ways, in whichever way is momentarily convenient. Almost everyone's comments on Right To Be Forgotten in this thread miss that key issue.
  • will_brown 9y ago
    >Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? I think even Trump should be entitled to accurate public reporting, for example, it should be noted Trump has never personally filed for bankruptcy, rather, he has been the owner of companies (casinos) that have filed for bankruptcy. Would you attribute the recent Toys R Us bankruptcy to individual owners? Or if your favorite startup goes under and has to declare bankruptcy to shield itself from creditors before the company dissolves would you start attributing bankruptcy to individual employees with equity/stock options?
    • davidcbc 9y ago
      > Would you attribute the recent Toys R Us bankruptcy to individual owners? I wouldn't attribute it to the owners of individual stores, but the CEO? Absolutely > Or if your favorite startup goes under and has to declare bankruptcy to shield itself from creditors before the company dissolves would you start attributing bankruptcy to individual employees with equity/stock options? Trump wasn't an individual employee with stock options.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • will_brown 9y ago
        It should be noted im not sticking up for Trump, just addressing the idea of attributing a company bankruptcy to company owners as if they personally filed bankruptcy, as done by OP. Still if you want to attribute the bankruptcies of companies to Trump personally because he was CEO...post a link, because I don’t think Trump was an employee of these companies at all, much less responsible for day to day operations of the casinos as CEO. He was an owner for sure and likely sat on the board, not unlike many SV investors and VCs of startups that fail everyday.
        • tialaramex 9y ago
          The reason it's called the "Trump Organisation" is because it's unusual in that Trump literally just owns it. It's not a bunch of public companies with Trump happening to have some job like "Chief Executive" or "Chairman", it's personally owned outright by Donald J Trump (in a few cases the companies are co-owned, but mostly it's just Trump).
  • neolefty 9y ago
    Google says it is protecting people from still-predatory actors: > The claimants ... argue that since their crimes are decades old, they should be able to move on from their past. .... Google counters that the information is in the public interest, and still relevant given that the nature of the claimants’ business has not changed dramatically in the ensuing years. Google is being picky about what to remove and, in this case, go to great lengths to back up their judgment. What is motivating them? Do they want to preserve information for its own sake, or for their own relevance as a search engine? Or both? > [Google] reported that it rejects more than half of the requests it receives, but did not provide insight as to why. The statistics of who wants things removed, and why, are surely very interesting. Here's a report from Google (linked from the article): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4MKNwf5MgeztG7OnJRnl3ym3gIT3HUK/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4MKNwf5MgeztG7OnJRnl3ym3gI... Edit: Oops I should have read further! > England’s Information Commissioner ... warned that if the court sided with Google, it would completely defang the original ruling. “In effect,” she wrote, Google “would be able to operate the right to be forgotten regime almost entirely free from regulatory oversight and control.” Is Google looking for a blanket exemption?
  • eberkund 9y ago
    You bring up a good point but I think the difference is the severity of the piece of information in question. Pedophilia and bankruptcies are already considered special bits of data that have their own dedicated information registries that maintain this information. Up until this point in history it hasn't been feasible to do the same thing for every minute detail of every person's lives. This lack of feasibility is probably why the debate regarding this subject is unfortunately so far behind reality.
  • gaius 9y ago
    Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? Your criminal record is expunged after a time. This is about whether Google is above the law of the land.
    • paulie_a 9y ago
      No it isn't
      • gray_-_wolf 9y ago
        Depends on the country and severity of the crime
      • needToSay 9y ago
        There more than one country in the world you xenophobe
  • oldcynic 9y ago
    Doesn't seem dangerous or journalistic at all here. In the UK at least the legal system is already aware and deals quite reasonably with the right to be forgotten. Has done for years. After a certain period a crime is considered spent and you can not be required to reveal it - except in some very limited circumstances. You'd have to reveal spent crimes if you want to join the police or become a magistrate for instance. You might want senior politicians added on this list perhaps. If you got a fine or a short prison sentence, the period is relatively short. A long prison sentence for a serious offence is never considered spent. I think there is something of a sliding scale of how long a sentence takes to expire. I would want essentially the same from the right to be forgotten. A citizen should not have to see Google reminding potential employers of a minor or youth offence 20 years ago when the legal system feels it expired ages ago. Doesn't seem that complex to achieve either. So what would be the problem then?
    • jasode 9y ago
      >Doesn't seem that complex to achieve either. So what would be the problem then? Since you're familiar with it, I'm curious how the following situations are handled... There was a famous rape case involving a Stanford student. His name is Brock Turner. If you search directly on keywords "Brock Turner"[1], the first results will be his rape conviction. I think it's logical to assume the Right To Be Forgotten wants these search results directly associated with his name to be removed. But what about a level of indirection? What about searching for "The Stanford Rapist"[2]. Those results are also about Brock Turner. Are those removed as well? What about another level of indirection? If one searches images for keywords "mugshot criminology textbook"[3], Brock Turner's photos are the most prominent. Would those get removed too? What if the victim writes a popular blogpost, "I was raped by Brock Turner and here's my story...etc...", would her article be removed from the google results? What takes precedence? The victim's free speech or the felon's censorship powers granted by Right To Be Forgotten? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=brock+turner https://www.google.com/search?q=brock+turner [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=stanford+rapist https://www.google.com/search?q=stanford+rapist [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=mugshot+criminology+textbook&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=mugshot+criminology+textbook... (made possible because several reddit threads made it widely known that his photo was now in college textbooks: https://www.reddit.com/search?q=brock+turner https://www.reddit.com/search?q=brock+turner)
  • totony 9y ago
    I think the judicial system should account for the permanent damage to reputation of crimes in sentencing (e.g. reduce sentence because you know it will have lasting impact) and we shouldnt encourage this history rewriting bs
  • ksk 9y ago
    >Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? Because a judicial process made that determination. Random people don't decide anything, they petition. As an aside, there absolutely nothing journalistic about an advertising company like Google. >This "right to be forgotten" seems incredibly dangerous to me. It doesn't seem like that to me at all. The purpose is also to protect victims of revenge porn, or victims of slanderous propaganda, who have no other recourse.
  • aaomidi 9y ago
    You know what I find amazing in this entire debate? We provide protections for literal objects in the form of DMCA and other various copyright systems. We provide legal enforcement for the right for these copyrighted systems to be forgotten on search engines. We threaten the rulebreakers with massive fines and prison time. But when it comes to REAL people. People who can have their lives completely changed with wrong/very negative information about them being accessible everywhere we do nothing. It's just fascinating.
    • jedberg 9y ago
      Have you've ever been at the receiving end of a DMCA notice? If you have, you wouldn't use this analogy. DMCA is so utterly broken. There is no verification in the process and no real penalties for false claims. So people use it as a weapon to remove stuff they don't like, even if it has nothing to do with copyright.
      • aaomidi 9y ago
        I know. That's exactly my point. If you have enough money you will be able to take down any information of yourself you don't want under the guise of DMCA or related copyright laws.
        • gray_-_wolf 9y ago
          > If you have enough money that's how world ruled by lawyers works in general
    • pitaj 9y ago
      Many people arguing against GDPR, right to be forgotten, etc do not support the DMCA at all. In fact, most in my experience deeply oppose the DMCA and even IP in general.
    • arca_vorago 9y ago
      DMCA was crappy and we should have never allowed it to be passed in the first place. It has been used to censor more than protect IP.
  • Khaine 9y ago
    Trump is a public figure, and I'm pretty sure there is a public figure exception within GDPR to the right to be forgotten.
    • gray_-_wolf 9y ago
      And if he wasn't? And become one only after applying his "right to be forgotten"? Would that make any difference?
      • Khaine 9y ago
        It would still be in the public record. Nothing would stop someone from digging it up and writing an article about it.
  • nixpulvis 9y ago
    Um... there are some things that are designed specifically without the right to be forgotten... Like credit, taxes, etc. The point of the right to be forgotten is to allow us to ask for services to remove all information because they are NOT these special (usually government controlled) services or systems. Nobody in their right mind is arguing that a criminal can log onto some crime.gov and say "plz delete me", for example.
  • bluGill 9y ago
    In fact Trump's bankruptcies have been forgotten. The point of bankruptcy is that after a few years they disappear from your record. People who deal in credit are not allowed to know of any of trump's past bankruptcies (after a few years), they are gone and he starts over with a clean sheet. As others have pointed out, Trump hasn't actually declared bankruptcy. There is an interesting debate about that in other threads, read them there.
  • drharby 9y ago
    Honestly, i believe the damage to ones life should stop when the judicial system has said the debt to society has been paid. One reason i desire to see more convict employment advocate groups
    • chris_wot 9y ago
      Sad you have been downvoted, I largely agree.
  • Crontab 9y ago
    I pretty much agree with you. The "right to be forgotten" may as well be called "the right to suppress information".
  • Clubber 9y ago
    There should be an exclusion for public figures. We have plenty of exclusions for them regarding privacy already.
    • IAmEveryone 9y ago
      There is.
  • bluetwo 9y ago
    I don't know, but it's a good argument to have.
  • fouc 9y ago
    I think you have a point that "right to be forgotten" could be abused to censor the truth. But at the same time, perhaps there needs to be a way to de-emphasize older truths? For example if Alice did something 10-20 years ago, should that appear in the first page of the search results? Perhaps it should be ranked lower due to age. Perhaps search engines could have a memory system similar to humans. Older stuff is gradually forgotten or de-emphasized or turn blurry. A humane memory system.
    • dabockster 9y ago
      > Perhaps search engines could have a memory system similar to humans. Older stuff is gradually forgotten or de-emphasized or turn blurry. I think this is what is in mind in terms of a "right to be forgotten". Not the large things, but the small bullet points from 10+ years ago that, in a sane world, would be completely ludicrous to compare with your current self.
  • lhorie 9y ago
    If you are specifically searching for child molesters, you can find that information in other databases without necessarily searching for specific names. If it really matters, e.g. for a job, you'd want to be checking their criminal record, not google. If someone searches for your name, google has no way of determining if they are looking for your LinkedIn profile or reports of alleged criminal activity from you, nor does it have journalistic resources to determine if said reports are accurate or to edit them in light of new data. It's already possible to game google into indexing fake testimonials for scam purposes, as well as push old results off with a barrage of recent activity. Bad actors can always find ways to misdirect and deleting is only but one way. Isn't it fine that delisting just remains astronomically more laborious to do as the volume of reports of badness increase? Siding with google seems more like a passive aggressive way of getting an ego massage out of "punishing" things one does not like, but it kinda throws out the baby with the bath water.
  • anoncoward7780 9y ago
    spoken like a person with no history. Imagine youre in college and everyone sees you according to the construct of who you "appeared" in grammar school, or for that matter High school. It's like that. You should have the right to have to dumb stuff you did in college,or high school to not follow you forever. If you're not an adult already (30+ years)then you'll understand this eventually. We see the world and others as a mirror of ourselves. It's also telling that the first place you went to was the land of criminal intent. By the way child molesters are a legal situation different from Google's search engine. They HAVE TO BY LAW announce themselves when moving to a new location. They HAVE TO BY LAW appear on child molester website list. Those are separate from Google's search engine. You will still be able to go to www.lawwebsite.com and "find a pedo". sheesh.
    • sakuronto 9y ago
      Or maybe you should just own it and put those things behind you with a laugh. This gives the government way too much power over who knows what, the ability to erase things as they see fit, and all that so that you can avoid a bit of embarassment, to me, sounds ridiculous.
  • aaron695 9y ago
    Other than the moral bankruptcy of this comment it is also a total lie. This has nothing to do with removing from the record at all. And to use the 'what about the children' defence..... Or worst somehow bringing up Trump.... It's hard to know where to start.
  • chris_wot 9y ago
    Hardly. I work for a media company, and they were very clear to us that they are a provider and not media company, and have no editorial stance, nor do they do any journalism. They can't have it both ways I'm afraid. However, it's pretty ridiculous really. If they claim to be journalists, then it should be possible to also sue them for defamation if they publish defamatory material. Currently you can't because, quite rightly, they use safe harbour provisions to prevent being sued. They are now sailing into waters where they are at risk of not being able to claim this. The folks at Google haven't thought this through clearly.
  • voidr 9y ago
    > Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Those records are all available in a publicly accessible registry maintained by the goverment. > Do we give child molesters the right for their crimes to be forgotten? You have the sexual offender registry for those things. > Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? No, it's about people's mind not being immutable. I used to believe in Santa ~25 years ago, if I would have made a viral tweet about it back then, should I be barred from joining a scientific community today? Even Eric Schmidt said that young people should get a reset button once they become of age. My rule of thumb is that: the authorities and law enforcement should have monopoly over maintaining information that should stick with you forever, not some private company that is even more unaccountable than the government.
  • geocar 9y ago
    > Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Do we give child molesters the right for their crimes to be forgotten? The right to erasure (right to be forgotten) does not protect this. It refers to a very specific right that does have real limitations. The ICO has written some specific guidance about this that might be helpful in your understanding. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-erasure/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...
• danso 9y ago
  > England’s Information Commissioner dismissed Google’s argument and said that journalism presupposes a process that includes human editorial decision-making, something that Google’s very algorithmic service does not do. A side issue (not relevant to the mentioned court case, which deals with long-ago crime convictions): Google News incorporates some human editorial decision-making -- the whitelisting of domains. At some point courts will have to make more difficult/less binary decisions about what constitutes human editorial decision-making, which in modern times almost always involves a mechanical algorithmic process. I guess we've run into this before when deciding if bloggers enjoyed the same protections as traditional news institutions.
• fenwick67 9y ago
  > In its defense, Google has argued that it should be protected under an exception for journalism because it provides access to journalistic content This is like saying a grocery store should be exempt because it sells newspapers
  • danso 9y ago
    I think it's a little more nuanced than that. Google Search provides access to news articles which themselves aren't not subject to withholding/deleting this historical information. If Google Search were ordered by the government to delist one news site over another, that would almost certainly be seen as an attack on freedom of the press.
  • notatoad 9y ago
    >This is like saying a grocery store should be exempt because it sells newspapers well, yes. or are you saying a grocery store should have to read every article in every newspaper they sell to ensure it doesn't contain information that legally should be forgotten?
  • lotu 9y ago
    What if grocery stores where required by law to evaluete people’s claims that articles about them should not be published and then remove those articles from the newpapers it sells (though newspapers sold directly to consumers were still unedited). You might presume that the grocery store (if it had the resources to handle this burden) would have to make journalistic decisions about if it sould allow or densely every single request. This is almost exactly like what Google is claiming.
• nraynaud 9y ago
  Journalistic? Like an "editor of content"? That's something that will backfire. There is no escaping that google is the author and editor of an algorithm and that it chooses to remove things from the index for a variety of reasons, so I don't think it's unfair to have laws that try to regulate the list of exclusion.
• ballenf 9y ago
  It seems strange to me that a New York based journalism institution didn't use the plaintiffs real names. On what basis do you suppose they decided to honor EU/English law?
  • bazzargh 9y ago
    On the basis that the information simply isn't available, it doesn't appear in any court publications. eg a recent UK Supreme Court case was: 'R (on the application of HC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and others (Respondents)' HC here has her name witheld (R is 'Regina', ie the Crown). Exactly the same thing happens in the US; eg in Roe v Wade, 'Roe' (a Jane Doe plaintiff) didn't have her identity revealed until she herself told the press who she was afterwards; the papers still use the pseudonym to describe it. If the identity is known by other means the US press has been known to publish - eg in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJS_v_News_Group_Newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJS_v_News_Group_Newspapers, it was a celebrity case and the story had been shopped round various papers, with the result that US tabloids got the story and knew it would sell copies. In this case there's no likely source for a leak.
  • IAmEveryone 9y ago
    The NYT is just practicing what Google is claiming to be: journalism. The petitioners' names are irrelevant to the story. Yet publishing them would obviously harm them. It's an easy call. Good journalists don't operate by a fundamentalist "information wants to be free" paradigm. They don't print gruesome photos of car accidents, lists of who is gay or not, leaked names of FBI informants in the mafia, or the Secretary of State's private phone number.
• gressquel 9y ago
  I am usually a advocate for privacy and right to be forgotten but in this case I am with Google. The criminals can easily erase their conviction and start 'scamming' victims again. Remember a time when I was looking for apartment and I Googled the name of the owner only to find news articles about how he had built 2 apartments inside one, even though they had no fire escape.
  • jacquesm 9y ago
    Criminals can not erase their conviction. At best they will be able to wipe out your ability to find out about that conviction. If you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check and not everybody gets to do background checks on everybody else for no particular reason. And that's a good thing.
    • philipkglass 9y ago
      According to what gressquel posted, they were doing a background check for a particular reason. If you meant "if you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check that costs money," then the "no particular reason" threshold for running a check depends strongly on the checker's financial resources. Whatever balance between right to privacy and right to knowledge is struck, it should have uniform effects. The law shouldn't make it harder for a potential tenant to check the background of an apartment complex owner than for the owner to check the background of a potential tenant, even though in most cases the owner will have more money.
      • jacquesm 9y ago
        A google search is not a background check.
        • webbles 9y ago
          Agreed. And only a moron would think it suffices as one.
        • 9y ago
• lightbyte 9y ago
  "Right to be forgotten" just sounds so ridiculous to me, how did this become a thing? Are people going to want to burn the history books at their local library next because it contains some information they don't like reminding people of?
  • iamdave 9y ago
    Are people going to want to burn the history books at their local library next because it contains some information they don't like reminding people of? Funny (read: sad) that you should mention this https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/15/the-ironic-enduring-legacy-of-banning-to-kill-a-mockingbird-for-racist-language/?utm_term=.e00eda394d23 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/15... I'm not posting this to suggest it's a harbinger of things to come or anything like that, but...the events here are just too ironic to not be the result of us somehow stumbling into an alternate dimension (I'm not above ruling out CERN as a possible culprit)
  • guelo 9y ago
    > how did this become a thing? Google is a foreign corporation to Europeans so it sounds scarier and more sinister to the general public. Politicians take advantage of that to demagogue so they pass harsh laws to show that they are doing something against the scary foreigners.
    • d6de964 9y ago
      It's one of the most recognizable tech companies by far (in par with Microsoft and Facebook). If Google doesn't comply with EU's privacy protection laws for Europeans I don't see a reason why it or its parent company can't be fined there. In a way that compensates the EU citizens for all their private information gathered, analyzed and sold.
  • kodablah 9y ago
    > Are people going to want to burn the history books at their local library next because it contains some information they don't like reminding people of? Nope, they want to burn the card catalog. Still wrong of course, but many people think that because people can't be trusted to act reasonably on historical, factual information they see about someone, they should legislate instead. Laws become the answer to everyone's problems, education or accepting the bad with the good in an age of transparency are just not options sadly.
• baldfat 9y ago
  > ‘right to be forgotten’ I really think that hiding facts is a mistake. Yes someone made a bad mistake why is it their right to have it removed from the internet? Now if there are factually wrong then absolutely they should have the ability to have it removed. Things can legally be removed from a person's record like crimes committed by minors but if someone's life was impacted are we going to remove the victims' story for the sake of the offenders? Imagine going to the library to read the old news papers and have excerpts redacted and cut out. To me that is what people are trying to do. This is changing our history like the horrible biographies of the 19th and early 20th century where the hero of the biography was perfect and a superhero due to moral perfectionism, but now it is seeked after by individual's regardless to their poor choices and actions.
  • Heliosmaster 9y ago
    A search engine != the internet. It should not be removed from the internet, but it should be removed from google. It's not the same thing as dealing with paper newspaper. One you have to go an explicitly look for the information and browse through them to get it (and still it can escape your gaze). With google you just need to type name and surname, and everything is at your fingertips.
    • baldfat 9y ago
      removed from the search engine is like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the demolition of the earth was filed in the basement in a file on a far off world.
    • BookmarkSaver 9y ago
      But how is it ok or reasonable to say "you are allowed to see this, but we're going to make laws to make it arbitrarily hard to do". Either it's removing public information (censorship), or it's this bizarre stop-gap to allow people to conceal information while pretending they aren't deleting it. There's not reasonable or principled system here. Just a dangerous stop-gap measure where it seems like people are trying to delete (censor) information under the guise of individual freedom ("we're just making it harder"). I don't really buy into the middle-ground presented by this measure.
• briandear 9y ago
  So this is a right for Google to not show unflattering results but not about a publishers right to publish unfavorable content? Is this not blaming the card catalog for the content of a book? If the information is true, than how can we argue it should be hidden? If it is false, then that’s a libel case against the publisher of the false information — not the indexer. If someone wants to be forgotten, they should be addressing the publisher, not the indexer. The precedent of removing factual information from discovery is a dangerous one. It would seem like existing libel laws ought to cover cases where false information persists. Should a newspaper delete old content just because “people change?” That’s just crazy.
• alexnewman 9y ago
  I also declare myself a journalist. Thus I will keep records on everyone!
• Heliosmaster 9y ago
  I see here a few comments criticizing the right to be forgotten, but I pose a question a bit differently. Let us assume somebody commits a crime. He goes to jail, he pays for it, as society deems necessary. A local newspaper reported it and now every time you google their name such an article pops up. This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw. It seems to me the debt to society has been paid by going to jail, and yet they keep paying by having the news of their mistake be very prominent. What is the right course of action, in this case? Note that the difference between traditional newspapers is their general availability. Now the entire history is just a few clicks away, whereas with paper you need to go look for it specifically to find it, so it's a LOT less damaging. What does HN think about this?
  • lightbyte 9y ago
    It sounds like the actual problem is >This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw. Hiding information from people sounds like a bandaid to the issue of people being overly judgemental. Maybe we need to be more accepting to rehabilitation.
    • Sharlin 9y ago
      The real problem is internet makes everything look like it happened yesterday. Traditional news is, well, news, but Google doesn’t really distinguish between yesterday and 20 years ago. Some 90s articles and pages are still perfectly relevant and should be on the first page of search results, others very much not so.
      • CobrastanJorji 9y ago
        It does, though. The problem is that the most generally notable thing about a boring person who committed a serious crime 20 years ago is in fact the serious crime that they committed 20 years ago. Put another way, if I put the name of my new neighbor into Google, the resulting webpage I would in fact most want to see as the result would definitely be the article on the murder they committed 20 years ago, even though they have a Facebook page that was updated 10 minutes ago. Facebook page can be result number 2. If Google didn't show that result at all because it happened 20 years ago, and that person never did anything else notable more recently, I would consider Google to be a little broken.
• j45 9y ago
  Disappointing to hear this with the "do no evil" ethos of Google. Organizing all of the world's information is a great goal, but blurring the boundaries between personal, private information is another thing. If Google is journalistic: - Does Google know the difference between journalism and opinion/editorial content? - Can standards of external journalistic integrity be applied to Google? The majority of content online is OpEd and not subjective.
  • neolefty 9y ago
    Here's a report from Google with some stats about what was requested and what was removed: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4MKNwf5MgeztG7OnJRnl3ym3gIT3HUK/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4MKNwf5MgeztG7OnJRnl3ym3gI...
• firasd 9y ago
  I think part of the solution here is going to need to be social. We need to move beyond the Gawker-like era where if there's an awkward photo of you out there suddenly there's perpetual mass shaming about it. As we grow to know more info about each other we need an increase in societal maturity.
  • jfk13 9y ago
    > we need an increase in societal maturity Judging by how our society has been developing in recent years, I'm not optimistic about this.
  • return0 9y ago
    We need a "right to be forgiven" instead that would be a social thing, not something a corporation or the government can control.
• PeterMikhailov 9y ago
  In a similar case, Russia's Evgeny Prigozhin kept suing Russian newspapers to try to remove articles from the Internet about his corruption of the Russian state. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/06/13/evgeny-prigozhin-s-right-to-be-forgotten https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/06/13/evgeny-prigozhin-s-r...
• danShumway 9y ago
  I see a lot of people claim that this is just about having information at the top of a search result, and I agree that's better than outright censorship. But, I still take some small amount of umbrage with people claiming that nothing is being erased, just people's ability to find it. I think that's a very blurry line to draw - the idea the it's OK for information to exist somewhere in the void, but making it too easy to access is not OK. The intent behind rules like this is to make it much harder for people to access information. If Google isn't the Internet, and delisting won't suppress speech, then what value is the law? If Google is the Internet, and delisting from their site will hide information from the public, then how is this not censorship? There's no point in getting myself delisted from Google unless I expect that this will prevent most people from being able to find my information. People search names on Google because they want that information. The only way I can see for GDPR to stay effective or valuable in hiding me from those people is if it becomes a blanket ban on indexing or curation in general.
  • Hoagy 9y ago
    I agree with this. I am surprised that rather than trying to define itself as journalistic, Google isn't trying to present itself as an archivist (I am unaware if this has any legal meaning). I wonder what would happen if an explicitly archival service like the Wayback Machine got itself a state of the art search algorithm and became widely used in casual search. Would it also be required to delist?
• berg01 9y ago
  What the fuck. There is nothing journalistic about their compulsive instinct to archive everything (and to spend a lot of money on enabling not just crawling the web, but rather.. pretty much everything.) This would be like like giving some average reddit.com/datahoarder/ person a right to be forgotten, except that particular person happened have to crawl pretty much the entire world and probably knows enough to get 90% of the global population to get fired, if it wanted to.
• MPhmW7zskHcnKg 9y ago
  When I was a child, I committed a crime. They waited until just after my 18th birthday to charge me, and according to UK law that means that my name etc. could be published. Most of the articles get the details subtly wrong, and insinuate that I did much worse than what actually occurred. I believe, if I wanted to, I could exercise my right to be forgotten. But what's the point? Google is not the only search engine out there, and there is absolutely no way I could get every search engine to comply. Anyone who really wants to dig up my past would still be able to. Despite the fact that, in theory, the right to be forgotten would benefit me greatly, I think it needs to go. It's a complete waste of resources because it can never be effectively enforced. Ultimately, I've come to terms with the fact that my history isn't too much of a bad thing. If someone doesn't want to do business with me because of it, then I've just filtered out someone with superficial prejudices.
  • fucking_tragedy 9y ago
    Most people would agree that what you do as a child shouldn't be held against you as an adult, provided you've learned from your mistake. I'd say that what happened to you is a perversion of justice. You've paired your sense of helplessness with a need for divine perfection to reason away the purpose behind the right to be forgotten. There are people who have been faced with injustice, who haven't succumbed to letting it affect them forever. There are people who have paid their debt to society and shouldn't have that perpetually held against them. > Despite the fact that, in theory, the right to be forgotten would benefit me greatly, I think it needs to go. It's a complete waste of resources because it can never be effectively enforced. There is no law that is completely, effectively enforced. Laws against murder aren't effectively enforced, murder still happens all of the time. However, laws allow public action to be taken and give recourse to victims. > no way I could get every search engine to comply There are a handful of search engines people use. If Google alone complied, that would probably eliminate 90% of anyone who would ever search for you online. > Ultimately, I've come to terms with the fact that my history isn't too much of a bad thing. If someone doesn't want to do business with me because of it, then I've just filtered out someone with superficial prejudices. In a way, you have the privilege of being able to filter out opportunities. A few words in someone's history can effectively bar them from being hired or finding a place to live, leaving them with little to no opportunity. About a week ago, there was a post by an HN member about such a situation [1]. In the end, bills need to be paid and people need to eat. If someone has dependents, like the guy above [1], they will suffer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16708224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16708224
• hot_brown_sammy 9y ago
  Permanence of data in an imperfect world where authority is interested in punishment and oppression is dangerous.
• jakelarkin 9y ago
  eventually we just need to accept that a much greater depth of history is index searchable and adjust our actions, attitudes & judgments accordingly. Enshrining the old ways in rigid laws and bureaucracy is not going to work.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  These "right to be forgotten" laws are already being abused: * German murderers sue for Wikipedia to remove their names from the page about their victim. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0 * Russian oligarch sues Google and Yandex for linking to investigation about investigations of him and his businesses. https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/putins-personal-chef-sues-yandex-and-google-over-search-result-links-53105 https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/putins-personal-chef-sue... * A doctor sues to remove negative patient reviews. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10833894/Politician-paedophile-and-GP-claim-right-to-be-forgotten.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10833894/Polit... These laws will tip the balance of information away from the people and towards the wealthy who will have the means to conduct extensive background checks/research.
  • mxfh 9y ago
    The first one has little to do with the now implemented "right to be forgotten". It's claims were based on long existing german personality law and was actually struck down by the highest german court BGH in 2012 in favor of freedom of information. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/kriminalitaet/klage-wegen-namensnennung-sedlmayr-moerder-scheitert-vor-dem-bundesgerichtshof-11744093.html http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/kriminalitaet/klage-... https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BGH-weist-Klage-von-Sedlmayr-Moerder-gegen-Internet-Artikel-ab-1570800.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BGH-weist-Klage-von-...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• intralizee 9y ago
  I think Google should consider how human-error prône we are and how society suffers because of it. Everyone is slowly becoming dehumanized towards others by errors and I’ve witnessed first hand how errors of others will ruin a person; if they’re not clever enough to conquer the situation. Google should put more resources into improving Human Resources and Law before getting all uptight about removing what could be an error for a person but is impossible to prove; with the lacking resources of today. Most cases are hearsay of others and where a minoriy suffering by errors of the majority; the minority has no real evidence to work it out. A person will likely crumble in bad situations, unless educated in law and defense.
• nitwit005 9y ago
  Europe wrote the law in such a way that Google effectively has to act like a court, even though that's obviously problematic, and it has no interest in doing so. Sure, this seems a bit dubious, but they weren't exactly given a lot of guidance for handle these requests. I suspect they'd actually appreciate court rulings clarifying things.
• dcow 9y ago
  Good. The right to be forgotten is bullshit. That's not to say people don't need to learn to be a little more flexible, tolerant, and human about things people have done in the past, but deleting people's pasts is not the answer. Don't judge until you've walked someone's shoes (unless they're in the business of being public, then judge them but the right to be forgotten doesn't apply in remotely the same way in that case), howabout?
• linkmotif 9y ago
  The right to be forgotten is very strange to me. We all have that right already, it’s called oblivion and it’s inevitable.
• drngdds 9y ago
  I'm glad the First Amendment keeps this nonsense from happening in the US.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    Constitutions don't prevent anything; people caring about rights do. Constitutions are mostly just a reminder you should care, but if an insufficient power-weighted portion of the population cares, government will do what they want no matter what some piece of paper says.
  • decebalus1 9y ago
    Oh yes [1] how glad we all are. Also the fourth amendment which prevents the Patriot Act from happening. So glad of that one! Also, you may grab a read about the rest of the world. 'Free speech' is basically the norm. [1] https://law.yale.edu/mfia/case-disclosed/when-silence-isnt-golden-how-gag-orders-can-evade-first-amendment-protections https://law.yale.edu/mfia/case-disclosed/when-silence-isnt-g...
• kodablah 9y ago
  I look forward to the day when data can be distributed and become signed/immutable but still indexed. At least then we'll be forced to deal with educating people on how to react to information instead of restricting/de-indexing it. For some it will be unfortunate that they can't put blinders on people like they could back when humans curated content retroactively, and for others it can give them comfort that those in power lose that same ability (especially wrt themselves) compared to those not in power.
• ggg9990 9y ago
  In the midst of all this, one concrete action you can take is to give your kids common names that are hard to Google.
• eptcyka 9y ago
  I'd rather live in a society that is capable of forgetting, accepting that people can change and thus don't condemn others for their past. If we eliminate skeletons in our wardrobes, any little speckle on one's past will be devastating.
• dhimes 9y ago
  In the early days of Google they had a press conference. I don't recall the specifics- probably about when they announced having indexed 1B pages on the web. There was concern about privacy. To make a point, a reporter started reading some of the personal things she had learned about said Google CEO(s) from their search engine. Those pages (sorry) were not available in Google the following day. So, yeah. They know how important it is personally. First hand.
• lotu 9y ago
  Okay this quote at the top of the article irked me. > Google has argued that it should be protected under an exception for journalism because it provides access to journalistic content. Even as a legal sleight of hand, the argument is quite a departure from Google’s customary efforts to present itself as a disinterested arbiter of information, a position that has become more untenable with time Google was forced to become an arbiter of information by the very law in question. The EU could have set up a court system where you would sue the government and lawyer would argue against you why the information was in fact in the public interest and a judge would then decide the case. They didn’t do this probally because it would be a expensive and leave the government getting blamed when decisions are inevitably wrong/unpopular. Instead they forced Google to do this in a shout of confidence that Google would act in the public interest and not simply in the interest of resolving cases as quickly as cheaply as possible. It is easy to imagine a alternative world with a diffrent dominiat search engine that would allow information like corruption, histories of abuse and neglect to be hidden from the public.
• krick 9y ago
  I don't really have an opinion on the 'right to be forgotten' here, but it surprises me to say the least, how everything is justified by being 'journalistic', as if there's something intrinsically good about that. As if there are ordinary people, who, of course, must behave appropriately, respect privacy and others' feelings — and are actually legally enforced to do so. And then there are 'journalists', who can do whatever they want, harass anybody, and it's all good and well and the 'freedom of speech' — not they only can do so, but it's actually moral. Spy on everyone, spread lies and disinformation, take your photos without your consent, tell everyone your secrets, wash your dirty clothes of 20 years old on public — even if these dirty clothes are not actually your fault and haunt all your life you as it is. Just… come on.
• kevsim 9y ago
  I find it strange that the beef is with Google and not with the sites Google points at. Even if Google removes these search results, the articles are out there, probably linked from some other articles on the same newspaper's site, etc. This belief that removing from Google somehow makes it go away is odd.
  • z3t4 9y ago
    Google index means life or death for many companies. If you can not be found on Google you basically don't exist.
• sseth 9y ago
  The "right to be forgotten" is always going to be fraught. We are talking of a balance between competing rights of freedom of speech and privacy, and usually such finely balanced decisions are what the judicial system is for. But large platforms like Google and Facebook have become like "countries" in themselves. People are earning their livelihoods, finding their friends and loved ones, even committing crimes using these platforms. I think these companies are being forced to build due process procedures so people have recourse, not just for right to be forgotten, but also for other cases. And this is being compounded by the use of AI algorithms which work in mysterious ways even to their creators - an impersonal algorithm making decisions which may destroy someone's life, or make someone a millionaire. I wonder for example if the recent youtube attack could have been avoided if the shooter had an independent forum where she could ask for explanation and perhaps challenge the change in the ads policy which hurt her livelihood. Nothing justifies violence, but we can learn lessons for the future. We normally do not ask corporations to do such things, but for these mega-internet giants maybe the normal rules are not enough. Perhaps as a start, these companies should setup an ombudsman who can be approached when normal corporate avenues fail.
• gandutraveler 9y ago
  If the information exists in public domain and especially reported by news agencies then why should this information be deleted. Why should it only apply to Google and not other news agencies? EU should have more claroty on the law and make Google delete it only if it applies to the entire internet. Right to be forgotten should only apply to information provided by user wanting to be forgotten. For all other cases, we should ask the court to allow it to be forgotten from internet and not just google.
• tomcart 9y ago
  The bbc publishes a monthly list of urls removed by google. It is pretty instructive: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/83c19e58-e131-47c9-ae7f-82d914974940 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/83c19e58-e131-47...
• jmspring 9y ago
  It's curious how the company that dedicated itself to "do no evil" to gain traction, has done evil and is seeking limits on this thing, yet in this community still jumps up and down on Microsoft every time it can, yet (agreed given it's past), hasn't shown the same level of social evil GOOG and FB have.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• baud147258 9y ago
  I think for Google to be able to claim their search result are journalistic is a little like them having the cake and eating it. They are already claiming they are not responsible for the content they are distributing (because fake news and all...), but they also claim that that content should be protected.