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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

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 8y 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 8y 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.
  - l9k 8y ago
    Most people didn't commit murder 20 years ago but may have had a car accident or organized a loud party with weed while in college. People change and your neighbor now has a family and lives quietly. It seems unfair the world should know him about his past mistakes
    - dfox 8y ago
      The same notability argument is still valid. It is not that search engines are broken, but the society which would view something that happened 20 years ago, while being the most notable fact about given person, as relevant for anything else than conversation-starter is broken.
- lotu 8y ago
  This is a interesting point. You could imagine a partial simplistic solution that de ranked historical information for people unless it is specifically being asked for. It’s not clear that a search for a person’s “Bob Smith” nessacarily is interested in Bob’s 20 year old crimes, they might reasonably looking for things that person is currently doing like making music or writing or something else. This is the case when we search for celebrities. Now most people don’t have much interesting stuff on the internet so those old articles pop up. In fact those old arrivals typically have such low rankings that a common solution to this problem is to start a blog and be really aggressive about putting your name all over the place, if the point of Googling someone was to reliably find out if they have a criminal history from a long time ago you wouldn’t expect it to be so easily defeated.
bytematic 8y ago
That's not really a solution though.
mental1896 8y ago
This is a very interesting point. The internet brings its users ever closer together and it's not beyond reason to imagine this closeness reaching a point where it is similar to the closeness experienced by ancient tribes. Today we would find it hard to imagine, say, seeing our neighbors naked but it was once very normal. So we've come to expect a certain amount of privacy. A reduction in this privacy might precipitate a change in how people react to learning the private affairs of others. If everybody's legal history was laid bare, for instance, one might discover that getting in trouble is something quite a lot of people do--and in this light one might temper his reaction to learning of another's checkered past.
- rhacker 8y ago
  Except this theory doesn't work with today's search technology. For popular people (or social media queens) you will see exactly what they you want to see on the first 200 pages. For lesser popular people with names like "Jenny Zarkaneflaky" (fake person you don't need to google) you will see the one time they smoked pot and got quoted in the school newspaper for saying all people on the planet should die.
nlowell 8y ago
They're not mutually exclusive. And anyways, given the option of improving a tool/legislation vs improving the nature of human judgement, I will always take the former.
- noxecanexx 8y ago
  Exactly. Proposing that businesses change their attitude towards liability when there's no clear downside is just self deceit
pmyteh 8y ago
There's precedent for this in some fields. The UK's Rehabilitation of Offenders Act prohibits asking about most old convictions in most circumstances precisely because it's better for society to give opportunities for ex-cons and yet most employers see a black mark on a record and run away. I think it is a bandaid, but the proper solution would (1) require massive social engineering and (2) be really hard.
Cacti 8y ago
Maybe instead of relying on humans to suddently act differently than they ever have in thousands of years, we could just remove the stupid link. I mean, listen to yourself. Rather than an easy, technical solution, for a very limited and well defined problem, you're proposing we instead just wait until the billions upon billions of people on earth suddenly wise up, hit nirvana, sing Kum ba yah, and _be less judgemental_? So that, what, a giant, wealthy corporation isn't mildly bothered?
- Sacho 8y ago
  But there is no law that is crafted for this "very limited and well defined problem". "Right to be forgotten" goes much further than that. I can tentatively agree that for your proposed situation, it's unfair enough to former felons that it may require government intervention. Unfortunately, there's just no legislation that is focused and limited in scope in this regard; instead, the move is to broader, looser and vaguer laws like the GDPR. If we have to consider the reality of the situation for felons, we must also face the reality that they don't really seem to be the end goal, but just a story to placate worries about overregulation and censorship.
- sakabaro 8y ago
  > Rather than an easy, technical solution If I am a search engine, and don’t comply, I am going to jail. It’s not easy nor technical.
EpicEng 8y ago
Good luck changing human nature. In the meantime, can I just get it off of google so I can get a job and pay my damn bills? Your approach is of little comfort to the people this actually affects.

Sharlin 8y 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 8y 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.
- l9k 8y ago
  Most people didn't commit murder 20 years ago but may have had a car accident or organized a loud party with weed while in college. People change and your neighbor now has a family and lives quietly. It seems unfair the world should know him about his past mistakes
  - dfox 8y ago
    The same notability argument is still valid. It is not that search engines are broken, but the society which would view something that happened 20 years ago, while being the most notable fact about given person, as relevant for anything else than conversation-starter is broken.
lotu 8y ago
This is a interesting point. You could imagine a partial simplistic solution that de ranked historical information for people unless it is specifically being asked for. It’s not clear that a search for a person’s “Bob Smith” nessacarily is interested in Bob’s 20 year old crimes, they might reasonably looking for things that person is currently doing like making music or writing or something else. This is the case when we search for celebrities. Now most people don’t have much interesting stuff on the internet so those old articles pop up. In fact those old arrivals typically have such low rankings that a common solution to this problem is to start a blog and be really aggressive about putting your name all over the place, if the point of Googling someone was to reliably find out if they have a criminal history from a long time ago you wouldn’t expect it to be so easily defeated.

bytematic 8y ago

That's not really a solution though.

mental1896 8y ago

This is a very interesting point. The internet brings its users ever closer together and it's not beyond reason to imagine this closeness reaching a point where it is similar to the closeness experienced by ancient tribes. Today we would find it hard to imagine, say, seeing our neighbors naked but it was once very normal. So we've come to expect a certain amount of privacy. A reduction in this privacy might precipitate a change in how people react to learning the private affairs of others. If everybody's legal history was laid bare, for instance, one might discover that getting in trouble is something quite a lot of people do--and in this light one might temper his reaction to learning of another's checkered past.

rhacker 8y ago
Except this theory doesn't work with today's search technology. For popular people (or social media queens) you will see exactly what they you want to see on the first 200 pages. For lesser popular people with names like "Jenny Zarkaneflaky" (fake person you don't need to google) you will see the one time they smoked pot and got quoted in the school newspaper for saying all people on the planet should die.

nlowell 8y ago

They're not mutually exclusive. And anyways, given the option of improving a tool/legislation vs improving the nature of human judgement, I will always take the former.

noxecanexx 8y ago
Exactly. Proposing that businesses change their attitude towards liability when there's no clear downside is just self deceit

pmyteh 8y ago

There's precedent for this in some fields. The UK's Rehabilitation of Offenders Act prohibits asking about most old convictions in most circumstances precisely because it's better for society to give opportunities for ex-cons and yet most employers see a black mark on a record and run away. I think it is a bandaid, but the proper solution would (1) require massive social engineering and (2) be really hard.

Cacti 8y ago

Maybe instead of relying on humans to suddently act differently than they ever have in thousands of years, we could just remove the stupid link. I mean, listen to yourself. Rather than an easy, technical solution, for a very limited and well defined problem, you're proposing we instead just wait until the billions upon billions of people on earth suddenly wise up, hit nirvana, sing Kum ba yah, and _be less judgemental_? So that, what, a giant, wealthy corporation isn't mildly bothered?

Sacho 8y ago
But there is no law that is crafted for this "very limited and well defined problem". "Right to be forgotten" goes much further than that. I can tentatively agree that for your proposed situation, it's unfair enough to former felons that it may require government intervention. Unfortunately, there's just no legislation that is focused and limited in scope in this regard; instead, the move is to broader, looser and vaguer laws like the GDPR. If we have to consider the reality of the situation for felons, we must also face the reality that they don't really seem to be the end goal, but just a story to placate worries about overregulation and censorship.
sakabaro 8y ago
> Rather than an easy, technical solution If I am a search engine, and don’t comply, I am going to jail. It’s not easy nor technical.

EpicEng 8y ago

Good luck changing human nature. In the meantime, can I just get it off of google so I can get a job and pay my damn bills? Your approach is of little comfort to the people this actually affects.