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One part of the article that I really disagree with is the part about the Wayback machine. As much as I believe it's important we retain the information we put

One part of the article that I really disagree with is the part about the Wayback machine. As much as I believe it's important we retain the information we put on the internet, I fully support that if I put something on the internet and I am the creator of such content, I should be allowed to remove that content I created if I wish. This is closely aligned with the GDPR's "Right to be forgotten", yes this is in relation to different information but I'm simply describing its intent. But eventually, this level of control should be given to all of us who share content on the internet. That we the curators of such content can ask of the provider to take reasonable steps to remove such content. And that if a provider wishes to restrict how widely dispersed its creators content travels then that's fine. Just because something has been posted online, doesn't mean it needs to travel far and wide. Now yes, if I post something on the internet and I never touch it again I'm happy for it to hit the Wayback machine. However, I believe it to be important that if I did ever want that information I created to be removed, I'd have the ability to do so. Now if the Wayback machine does not allow this replication, then I understand why Quora do not allow them to use it. If anything its a battle on both sides, a battle to provide control to the content creators around the content they create. And a battle with trying to archive everything that exists on the internet and making it publicly available regardless of the content creators current wishes. Don't get me wrong, if you post something online expect it to be on the largest most accessible encyclopedia of information of all time. But times are changing, and we are starting to implement controls to protect our digital identity and the information we create online. My argument, is that if a content provider wishes to restrict how far and wide the information I curate on its service is spread, then there's nothing wrong with that. We should not be shaming content providers who wish to provide as much power to the curator as possible.

Barrin92 8y ago
I agree. It also aligns with the 'right to one's own image' for example, which is important in jurisdictions like Germany and gains increasing relevance with the prevalence of facial recognition and finding oneself on social media without having given consent. There is a real danger of the internet becoming a macabre and voyeuristic zoo where people lose control over their own data in the name of ever more transparency or public interest. It has always been particularly interesting to me that this is an especially big issue in the US, where you would expect the opposite given how it handles these matters of privacy and non-interference in the analog world.
ta3216 8y ago
I completely agree. I’m the copyright holder of text I published on my own website years ago; the fact they hold on to my written copyrighted work without my permission, ignoring my explicit request to remove it from their internal database is infuriating.
- zenexer 8y ago
  They honor formal takedown notices. Follow the instructions here: https://archive.org/about/terms.php https://archive.org/about/terms.php
zenexer 8y ago
You don't actually have the right to be forgotten, even within GDPR. That provision was heavily modified before GDPR passed, and the final phrasing doesn't really grant you the ability to erase all of your content from the internet. (If I recall correctly, the term "right to be forgotten" was also largely replaced with "right to erasure" in the actual text of the law, with the intent of indicating that you had the right to erase certain content stored in certain ways by certain services, but you couldn't truly be "forgotten.") Remember, a lot of this information isn't actually personal, so it's mostly not covered by GDPR anyway. If you post something to the internet, it's permanent. Lawmakers can say all they want, but someone somewhere is storing it regardless of laws, and it can get out again at any time. From a security perspective, it's irresponsible to provide people with the illusion that they can erase their tracks; they'll believe they can truly eliminate all trace of what they said and prevent any future consequences when that's clearly not the case.
- NoPicklez 8y ago
  Of course, let's not get too wrapped up in the GDPR's actual text. It is "Right to erasure" but is still known and referenced as "Right to be forgotten" as well. My intent was to put forth what it is describing, which is to allow the user to request the erasure of their information and subsequently that provider should then take reasonable steps to do so. If that provider, chooses to keep content creators information more central to itself and not allow it to be as widely spread. Then that's more power to the curator and could be something that Quora wants to uphold. On the same token, just because something has been posted on the internet doesn't mean that the provider of such content is obligated to spread it as far and wide as they want. They are allowed, to take efforts to restrict is movement.
  - zenexer 8y ago
    GDPR is almost exclusively for personal content (as in: name, email address), whereas most of the content on Quora isn't personal. GDPR makes no effort to allow you erase that. You can certainly take efforts to restrict its movement, as Quora has done here. It's mostly futile, though, especially in this case. Archive.org might not be willing to save it, but I guarantee plenty of comparable services are.
leibwiht 8y ago
>I fully support that if I put something on the internet and I am the creator of such content, I should be allowed to remove that content I created if I wish. I disagree. Whatever is put on the internet belongs to everyone on it, just because you made it doesn't mean you should have any kind of control over what people do with it. Enforcing redaction is obviously impossible but why would you even want to? You'll never get a guarantee that it's gone but also telling other people they cannot access information you originally created is kind of a jerk move. The reality is that 99.99% of people will never care about their phony "right" to be forgotten and the 0.01% who do most likely do so because they posted something worth wanting to be forgotten, which will be picked up by interested parties and reposted ad infinum because that's what people do with that sort of thing (dox, embarrassing pictures, etc), while the information of the 99.99% who don't care will be lost when Quora inevitably stops existing and then nobody gets it. >If anything its a battle on both sides, a battle to provide control to the content creators around the content they create. They don't have any, and they shouldn't either - everything on the internet should be given freely as virtually everything is received freely as well. People should be allowed to retain or repost or modify anything for any purpose, and they pretty much do. Allowing "content creators" to control their work would mean any modification of it unacceptable to them (which encompasses a lot of territory) would be impossible to distribute, making remix cultures like YTP and others impossible. This is completely unreasonable, they should just learn to deal with other people using their work for things they never intended and move on.
- zenexer 8y ago
  > phony "right" to be forgotten That wording might be a tad harsh, but, essentially, yes, the "right to be forgotten" that most people seem to believe the GDPR provides is just an illusion. It only applies to very specific types of information gathered for specific purposes. It most certainly doesn't apply to the overwhelming majority of content posted to Quora. That being said, there are other laws that could be at play here, such as intellectual property laws, but I'm assuming Quora either has you turn over ownership of anything you post or has you grant them an exclusive right to distribute it as they please. And if they were to decide to allow archive.org to archive it, you probably wouldn't have any right to request removal. If you choose to disseminate information on the internet, there's no going back. You're broadcasting whatever you post with the world's largest megaphone. It's foolish to think you can reverse that process. If a government passes a law banning a book, people who've read that book still know what it said--and chances are there are still copies of the book floating around. If you write something on the internet that you regret, that is your burden to bear for the rest of eternity. You chose to broadcast it with full knowledge of the fact that you would lose any semblance of control over the content the moment you hit Submit. It might not be ideal or fair, but that's the way it is, and laws aren't going to change it. Next time you're about to send a nasty email, think back to this comment, because what you're about to do is irreversible. Edit: Grammar
baroffoos 8y ago
I think in the vast majority of cases people don't actually care about deleting their content, they care mostly about disassociating something from their identity. Maybe they asked something dumb or controversial years ago and they don't want it to show up with their name on it. I think maybe there should be more of a trend of websites not showing usernames next to posts and just an identifier like "Purple" that changes when you post on a different thread/post so you can still follow the flow of a thread but not be able to link it to unrelated posts from that person. I cant say that knowing the usernames of posters has ever helped me on stack overflow. Mods would still be able to see it but regular users and scrapers can not.
- NoPicklez 8y ago
  Not a bad idea, essentially limiting your risk exposure from the start.

Barrin92 8y ago

I agree. It also aligns with the 'right to one's own image' for example, which is important in jurisdictions like Germany and gains increasing relevance with the prevalence of facial recognition and finding oneself on social media without having given consent. There is a real danger of the internet becoming a macabre and voyeuristic zoo where people lose control over their own data in the name of ever more transparency or public interest. It has always been particularly interesting to me that this is an especially big issue in the US, where you would expect the opposite given how it handles these matters of privacy and non-interference in the analog world.

ta3216 8y ago

I completely agree. I’m the copyright holder of text I published on my own website years ago; the fact they hold on to my written copyrighted work without my permission, ignoring my explicit request to remove it from their internal database is infuriating.

zenexer 8y ago
They honor formal takedown notices. Follow the instructions here: https://archive.org/about/terms.php https://archive.org/about/terms.php

zenexer 8y ago

You don't actually have the right to be forgotten, even within GDPR. That provision was heavily modified before GDPR passed, and the final phrasing doesn't really grant you the ability to erase all of your content from the internet. (If I recall correctly, the term "right to be forgotten" was also largely replaced with "right to erasure" in the actual text of the law, with the intent of indicating that you had the right to erase certain content stored in certain ways by certain services, but you couldn't truly be "forgotten.") Remember, a lot of this information isn't actually personal, so it's mostly not covered by GDPR anyway. If you post something to the internet, it's permanent. Lawmakers can say all they want, but someone somewhere is storing it regardless of laws, and it can get out again at any time. From a security perspective, it's irresponsible to provide people with the illusion that they can erase their tracks; they'll believe they can truly eliminate all trace of what they said and prevent any future consequences when that's clearly not the case.

NoPicklez 8y ago
Of course, let's not get too wrapped up in the GDPR's actual text. It is "Right to erasure" but is still known and referenced as "Right to be forgotten" as well. My intent was to put forth what it is describing, which is to allow the user to request the erasure of their information and subsequently that provider should then take reasonable steps to do so. If that provider, chooses to keep content creators information more central to itself and not allow it to be as widely spread. Then that's more power to the curator and could be something that Quora wants to uphold. On the same token, just because something has been posted on the internet doesn't mean that the provider of such content is obligated to spread it as far and wide as they want. They are allowed, to take efforts to restrict is movement.
- zenexer 8y ago
  GDPR is almost exclusively for personal content (as in: name, email address), whereas most of the content on Quora isn't personal. GDPR makes no effort to allow you erase that. You can certainly take efforts to restrict its movement, as Quora has done here. It's mostly futile, though, especially in this case. Archive.org might not be willing to save it, but I guarantee plenty of comparable services are.

leibwiht 8y ago

>I fully support that if I put something on the internet and I am the creator of such content, I should be allowed to remove that content I created if I wish. I disagree. Whatever is put on the internet belongs to everyone on it, just because you made it doesn't mean you should have any kind of control over what people do with it. Enforcing redaction is obviously impossible but why would you even want to? You'll never get a guarantee that it's gone but also telling other people they cannot access information you originally created is kind of a jerk move. The reality is that 99.99% of people will never care about their phony "right" to be forgotten and the 0.01% who do most likely do so because they posted something worth wanting to be forgotten, which will be picked up by interested parties and reposted ad infinum because that's what people do with that sort of thing (dox, embarrassing pictures, etc), while the information of the 99.99% who don't care will be lost when Quora inevitably stops existing and then nobody gets it. >If anything its a battle on both sides, a battle to provide control to the content creators around the content they create. They don't have any, and they shouldn't either - everything on the internet should be given freely as virtually everything is received freely as well. People should be allowed to retain or repost or modify anything for any purpose, and they pretty much do. Allowing "content creators" to control their work would mean any modification of it unacceptable to them (which encompasses a lot of territory) would be impossible to distribute, making remix cultures like YTP and others impossible. This is completely unreasonable, they should just learn to deal with other people using their work for things they never intended and move on.

zenexer 8y ago
> phony "right" to be forgotten That wording might be a tad harsh, but, essentially, yes, the "right to be forgotten" that most people seem to believe the GDPR provides is just an illusion. It only applies to very specific types of information gathered for specific purposes. It most certainly doesn't apply to the overwhelming majority of content posted to Quora. That being said, there are other laws that could be at play here, such as intellectual property laws, but I'm assuming Quora either has you turn over ownership of anything you post or has you grant them an exclusive right to distribute it as they please. And if they were to decide to allow archive.org to archive it, you probably wouldn't have any right to request removal. If you choose to disseminate information on the internet, there's no going back. You're broadcasting whatever you post with the world's largest megaphone. It's foolish to think you can reverse that process. If a government passes a law banning a book, people who've read that book still know what it said--and chances are there are still copies of the book floating around. If you write something on the internet that you regret, that is your burden to bear for the rest of eternity. You chose to broadcast it with full knowledge of the fact that you would lose any semblance of control over the content the moment you hit Submit. It might not be ideal or fair, but that's the way it is, and laws aren't going to change it. Next time you're about to send a nasty email, think back to this comment, because what you're about to do is irreversible. Edit: Grammar

baroffoos 8y ago

I think in the vast majority of cases people don't actually care about deleting their content, they care mostly about disassociating something from their identity. Maybe they asked something dumb or controversial years ago and they don't want it to show up with their name on it. I think maybe there should be more of a trend of websites not showing usernames next to posts and just an identifier like "Purple" that changes when you post on a different thread/post so you can still follow the flow of a thread but not be able to link it to unrelated posts from that person. I cant say that knowing the usernames of posters has ever helped me on stack overflow. Mods would still be able to see it but regular users and scrapers can not.

NoPicklez 8y ago
Not a bad idea, essentially limiting your risk exposure from the start.