18 ms·

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 forgot

by 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...

by darawk 9y ago

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...