5 ms·

People seem to conflate the collection of personal data and the (selective) censoring of information. The Right to be Forgotten, if applied to books would be O

People seem to conflate the collection of personal data and the (selective) censoring of information. The Right to be Forgotten, if applied to books would be Orwellian but somehow it's ok when the information is digitally aggregated/distributed?

Dylan16807 7y ago
Yes, there is a difference between data you collected about someone and a work they published.
- CDSlice 7y ago
  But Google is just indexing published works. It would be like forcing the library to hide all results for George Orwell. Google isn't collecting data about you, the publishers are. Google just lets other people easily find it.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    The "easily find it" part is the bigger problem facing us in modern times. Companies are collecting all these scraps of info into huge databases on people. The problem isn't an old newspaper article in a basement.
  - bloak 7y ago
    Justify that "just"! To me there seems to be a huge practical difference between information about someone being online somewhere and that information being made available to anyone who types that person's name into a browser. It would be a lot easier if newspapers could stop printing names of people who are not public figures. In some countries newspapers already don't do that. No doubt it's highly titillating for people to read about how AB was brutally raped and how XY has been arrested as a suspect (XY being released without charge the next day may or may not be considered newsworthy), but surely the story would be just as titillating without the names? Then we wouldn't have to argue about how to stop Google from indexing those names.
- curt15 7y ago
  To clarify the principles behind the law it might be useful to perform a thought experiment. Imagine that there existed people with extraordinary abilities to absorb and recall knowledge -- think Kim Peek. These people could conceivably read the newspaper archives with near-perfect recall -- essentially becoming a walking search engine. Would it then be desired to restrict these people from offering research services to other people?
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    I'm not sure how enlightening this is. Such a person would be allowed places that cameras aren't. They would be allowed to listen when microphones can't be used. It's a combination of intractability and that 1:1 human effort has natural limits on it; it's not like buying a big computer that's as invasive as a thousand humans. But even then, it wouldn't be ridiculous to suggest that if they're selling background check services then they have to abide by some restrictions.
    - blue_devil 7y ago
      If we want to enforce human limits on digital tech then digital anything has to be policed. Are recordings from all the cameras in the EU policed for the right to be forgotten? No. Probably because there's no aggregator similar to Google for them.
      - nocturnial 7y ago
        I don't know about the rest of the EU but where I live... yes, cameras are also subjected under: privacy laws, the right to be forgotten, etc. If your camera caught someone doing something illegal, turn it over to the police and let them handle it. If you publish the footage, you're likely to get prosecuted and fined. You don't have to agree because it's a cultural thing. Where I live privacy actually matters.
  - Faark 7y ago
    For a start I'd expect such an individual to take responsibility to not misrepresent the available facts. If there were accusations that turned out wrong I'd expected the corrected record to be offered prominently unless something else is requested explicitly. And I do not think googles algorithms can perform that level of content curation. Maybe accidentally by proxy, like e.g. due to an increased recency bias. But this isn't really what I want either...
- blue_devil 7y ago
  Censorship does not apply to "published work" only. You can censor historical facts, like the fact that Mr. X did Y 5 years ago. Should people be able to find out about that if the information was available digitally? I think so. I don't see how it's different from: if it's in a book somewhere I have the right to find and read it. Surely, the amount of effort required to know the facts does not qualify my right to know the facts?
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > I don't see how it's different from: if it's in a book somewhere I have the right to find and read it. But you don't have that. Even if it's published, copyright can interfere. If it's not published, you very much don't have that right. There is no general-purpose right to know things about people. It's by default fine if you find someone that wants to tell you something. But that doesn't itself make it okay to collate a database of information about millions of people.
chc 7y ago
Computers drastically change the scope of what's possible. They allow us to do things on scales that were unimaginable before. There are orders of magnitude more data in Google's index than in every book that has ever existed. Heck, flip the question to the other side of the table — is government mass surveillance acceptable because it's OK for a police officer to overhear things? Regardless of where you stand on either issue, it seems pretty clear that the change of scope and scale can drastically change the moral calculus.

Dylan16807 7y ago

Yes, there is a difference between data you collected about someone and a work they published.

CDSlice 7y ago
But Google is just indexing published works. It would be like forcing the library to hide all results for George Orwell. Google isn't collecting data about you, the publishers are. Google just lets other people easily find it.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  The "easily find it" part is the bigger problem facing us in modern times. Companies are collecting all these scraps of info into huge databases on people. The problem isn't an old newspaper article in a basement.
- bloak 7y ago
  Justify that "just"! To me there seems to be a huge practical difference between information about someone being online somewhere and that information being made available to anyone who types that person's name into a browser. It would be a lot easier if newspapers could stop printing names of people who are not public figures. In some countries newspapers already don't do that. No doubt it's highly titillating for people to read about how AB was brutally raped and how XY has been arrested as a suspect (XY being released without charge the next day may or may not be considered newsworthy), but surely the story would be just as titillating without the names? Then we wouldn't have to argue about how to stop Google from indexing those names.
curt15 7y ago
To clarify the principles behind the law it might be useful to perform a thought experiment. Imagine that there existed people with extraordinary abilities to absorb and recall knowledge -- think Kim Peek. These people could conceivably read the newspaper archives with near-perfect recall -- essentially becoming a walking search engine. Would it then be desired to restrict these people from offering research services to other people?
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  I'm not sure how enlightening this is. Such a person would be allowed places that cameras aren't. They would be allowed to listen when microphones can't be used. It's a combination of intractability and that 1:1 human effort has natural limits on it; it's not like buying a big computer that's as invasive as a thousand humans. But even then, it wouldn't be ridiculous to suggest that if they're selling background check services then they have to abide by some restrictions.
  - blue_devil 7y ago
    If we want to enforce human limits on digital tech then digital anything has to be policed. Are recordings from all the cameras in the EU policed for the right to be forgotten? No. Probably because there's no aggregator similar to Google for them.
    - nocturnial 7y ago
      I don't know about the rest of the EU but where I live... yes, cameras are also subjected under: privacy laws, the right to be forgotten, etc. If your camera caught someone doing something illegal, turn it over to the police and let them handle it. If you publish the footage, you're likely to get prosecuted and fined. You don't have to agree because it's a cultural thing. Where I live privacy actually matters.
- Faark 7y ago
  For a start I'd expect such an individual to take responsibility to not misrepresent the available facts. If there were accusations that turned out wrong I'd expected the corrected record to be offered prominently unless something else is requested explicitly. And I do not think googles algorithms can perform that level of content curation. Maybe accidentally by proxy, like e.g. due to an increased recency bias. But this isn't really what I want either...
blue_devil 7y ago
Censorship does not apply to "published work" only. You can censor historical facts, like the fact that Mr. X did Y 5 years ago. Should people be able to find out about that if the information was available digitally? I think so. I don't see how it's different from: if it's in a book somewhere I have the right to find and read it. Surely, the amount of effort required to know the facts does not qualify my right to know the facts?
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  > I don't see how it's different from: if it's in a book somewhere I have the right to find and read it. But you don't have that. Even if it's published, copyright can interfere. If it's not published, you very much don't have that right. There is no general-purpose right to know things about people. It's by default fine if you find someone that wants to tell you something. But that doesn't itself make it okay to collate a database of information about millions of people.

chc 7y ago

Computers drastically change the scope of what's possible. They allow us to do things on scales that were unimaginable before. There are orders of magnitude more data in Google's index than in every book that has ever existed. Heck, flip the question to the other side of the table — is government mass surveillance acceptable because it's OK for a police officer to overhear things? Regardless of where you stand on either issue, it seems pretty clear that the change of scope and scale can drastically change the moral calculus.