4 ms·

A "right" to destroy other people's memories, and that it unironically goes under the shockingly Orwellian new speak "right to be forgotten", is one of the more

by xoa 3y ago

A "right" to destroy other people's memories, and that it unironically goes under the shockingly Orwellian new speak "right to be forgotten", is one of the more horrifying recent things to see both spread and actually get embraced by so-called defenders of the people. There is no parallel in history. People absolutely can be naturally forgotten, but the principle that there is a right to have others forget naturally leads down a very, very ugly path. What people think about us and remember about us is NOT our data, it's theirs even if it's about us. If someone is spreading something factually and materially wrong there are already a myriad of tools to correct that. Edit: I think honesty and HN spirit compels me to steelman against my own argument as well. An argument can be made that there was a time when it was possible for someone willing to take some serious risk, cost, and effort to start anew from even a really bad past. Step back a century or two or earlier, and identities and persistent records could be pretty scattered. Somebody who did something pretty bad (but maybe not truly notorious) and served any time but was determined to reform could leave it all behind and travel a thousand miles away with a new name and build a new life (or die trying). The space for that has undoubtedly shrunken in some respects, and looks like it may continue to do so. I can accept that there can be reasonable differences of opinion on that. But against that is what it means to force it to happen. What such powerful legal tools will do when, with total inevitability, they are most effectively wielded by the most powerful as such tools always are. The people who already face the least accountability in many ways also tend to be the ones most able to make use of anything that may give them even a colorable case against critics and detractors. Some people truly reform, but of course some do not. And of course there are the principles involved. Is this something to use force over, because make no mistake, that's what it means to make something a right backed by law. That's what the very nature of "law" is, it's formalized opinions backed by power. The push for this new "right" feels different and dangerous to me then mere basic privacy, or worries about government (or even megacorp) surveillance.

officialchicken 3y ago
Despite the hand-wavy arguments and use of misinterpreted shock phrases like "Orwellian", a persons' memories (and biochemical retention mechanisms) are not the same as a computers. At a bare minimum, the former has a singular lifetime and there can only one instance - zero copies.
- xoa 3y ago
  OK, so you're fine with being able to forcefully destroy people's diaries? Photographs? What about those with memory problems who depend on such external memories? >the former has a singular lifetime and there can only one instance - zero copies. That's curious, I could have sworn humans had developed ways to share their memories with each other through things like "words" or "pictures"? Things proven to allow someone to share their memories with millions and pass them down such that we still know them even thousands of years later. So you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers, paintings and such? There is no shock phrasing here, despite you wanting to deflect. To forget is to lose memories. A right to have others forget necessarily implies actively forcing them to destroy their own memories. That's what it means, stripped of the misdirection. It's evil. I'm not sold that "do it on a computer" always is a magic wand that means now it's fine to use government force with it.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > So you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers, paintings and such? "Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's copies of that data" are two different things. It's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or what have you, without allowing Google to index those things or make its own copies.
    - xoa 3y ago
      >"Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's copies of that data" are two different things. Why? How many people may they share copies with before it's no longer allowed in your opinion? What is your basis for calculating that? >It's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or what have you, without allowing Google to index those things or make its own copies. Of course she can choose not to allow Google to index those things or make its own copies, but why should she be forced not to? Or Google forced not to? What about her circle of friends, and how big can that circle be? What if she runs her own little blog, wiki, forum, newsgroup, or the like? What about if it's a newspaper, can they index it or make copies? A single journalist? Researcher? What does "newspaper", "journalist", or "researcher" even mean as a matter of law? Are only certain elites allowed now? And on and on. You shouldn't argue for a big new expansion of government force restricting information over and above defamation law without really being able to think all this through IMO. Details really matter. Imagine the absolute worst populist wannabe dictators at not merely national scale but at the local small town scale that doesn't get much attention but has real power to affect people's lives. What are they going to do with this? Does it matter if they'd lose a 6-figure lawsuit in the end if no one they would go after can afford to fight it? That's not a theoretical threat. Anti-SLAPP laws help a lot by making things much cheaper thanks to a fairly straight forward (under defamation law) low pass filter. A judge can determine pretty easily if there is a colorable case or not. As the linked article says, "right to be forgotten" is complex and case-by-case, ie, expensive. And we know that "expensive lawsuit" means "bullies will use this for illegitimate ends", so we should be very cautious about opening up mass applicable complex new forms of action without really thinking it through.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RandomLensman 3y ago
Why not look what happened elsewhere where the right to be forgotten exists? Actual implementations might not turn out to be so dire.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
And do the "myriad tools" to combat disinformation stack up in this brave new era of LLMs dedicated to firehosing that disinformation far faster than you can combat it? Are you willing to put your reputation on the line to "steelman" your conviction? Do you get this worked up about simple link rot?
AJ007 3y ago
One of the challenges on HN is that the United States pretty much singularly has a very strong right to free speech as a part of law. The right to be forgotten is a very direct an unarguable violation of this. It isn't even debatable, and thus we are left debating free speech issues of which Europeans and Americans have very strong differences (in my opinion, anyone who is under an authoritarian government doesn't get to participate in the debate for censorship.) I don't know what is worse - that, for example, a Norweigen neo-Nazi mass murderer who will only serve 20 years in prison could erase the stories about them and that event ever occuring, or that someone who did something really dumb in college could usurp and override everyone else's right to free speech. The right to be forgotten rests on the premise that someone can be "reformed" and that their right to erase the past outweighs the rights of everyone else. The basic premise is someone did something really bad or embarrassing and they are too lazy to change their name (I have friends who have done that, due to an embarrassing newspaper article appearing Google.) I think we are headed toward a bifurcated interest. The reason that countries outside of the US have been able to compel American tech companies to do their bidding, to date, is because these companies are monopolies that generate massive amounts of cashflow doing things which are not impacted by that law (right to be forgotten does almost 0 to Google's income.) How is this going to work with LLM models? Keyword censorship can be inserted at the input and output levels, but you can make the LLM bypass that. These models will not be re-trained on demand. The open models can not be recalled. I suspect a lot of countries are about to be excluded from the next wave of innovation.
charles_f 3y ago
> there is a right to have others forget This is different from what the article (and ruling) are talking about. This is not about going in people's memory and deleting them, neurolizer style. It's not even talking to get the page down. It's talking about stopping to smear that person's name by advertising the publication. > There is no parallel in history Yes there is. If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue. Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down. If you are publish stuff about a corporation that is bad for them, you might be sued to take it down. Plenty of examples.
- xoa 3y ago
  >If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue Sure, but you're not going to get anywhere with your suit unless it's defamation. "Smearing" your name with something you actually did is (and or should be) protected speech. The article does not describe the confidential plaintiff winning a defamation lawsuit and forcing the material to be taken down from its source. And there would need to be no new "right to be forgotten" for that, that's just bog standard century old defamation law. All search engines and regular sites for that matter, anything that hosts 3rd party generated content, has (and is required to have by law) contacts and processes in place for taking down actual illegal material. The entire debate around this new thing is getting stuff you merely don't like but is entirely true hidden away. >Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down Which sounds like horrible to me and exactly the problem! If he plagiarized, why should he be able to get those videos taken down?
  - dmbche 3y ago
    Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be defamatory, it's in the intent (or carelessness) to cause harm to another that it's decided to be defamation or not.
    - xoa 3y ago
      >Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be defamatory Not in the US it can't, truth is an absolute defense against defamation. And while sure, absolutely lots of countries don't respect free speech or support robust criticism very well, but I think those that don't are wrong. Hence why I included "(and or should be)", the ones that don't still should IMO.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 3y ago
The First Amendment is a fundamental of US society. It was the source of two of the "Four Freedoms" during WW2. Countries that infringe on the First Amendment rights of Americans are properly termed "enemies". Countries that are currently under the US nuclear umbrella should understand the cost of that protection.

by xoa 3y ago

officialchicken 3y ago

Despite the hand-wavy arguments and use of misinterpreted shock phrases like "Orwellian", a persons' memories (and biochemical retention mechanisms) are not the same as a computers. At a bare minimum, the former has a singular lifetime and there can only one instance - zero copies.

xoa 3y ago
OK, so you're fine with being able to forcefully destroy people's diaries? Photographs? What about those with memory problems who depend on such external memories? >the former has a singular lifetime and there can only one instance - zero copies. That's curious, I could have sworn humans had developed ways to share their memories with each other through things like "words" or "pictures"? Things proven to allow someone to share their memories with millions and pass them down such that we still know them even thousands of years later. So you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers, paintings and such? There is no shock phrasing here, despite you wanting to deflect. To forget is to lose memories. A right to have others forget necessarily implies actively forcing them to destroy their own memories. That's what it means, stripped of the misdirection. It's evil. I'm not sold that "do it on a computer" always is a magic wand that means now it's fine to use government force with it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > So you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers, paintings and such? "Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's copies of that data" are two different things. It's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or what have you, without allowing Google to index those things or make its own copies.
  - xoa 3y ago
    >"Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's copies of that data" are two different things. Why? How many people may they share copies with before it's no longer allowed in your opinion? What is your basis for calculating that? >It's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or what have you, without allowing Google to index those things or make its own copies. Of course she can choose not to allow Google to index those things or make its own copies, but why should she be forced not to? Or Google forced not to? What about her circle of friends, and how big can that circle be? What if she runs her own little blog, wiki, forum, newsgroup, or the like? What about if it's a newspaper, can they index it or make copies? A single journalist? Researcher? What does "newspaper", "journalist", or "researcher" even mean as a matter of law? Are only certain elites allowed now? And on and on. You shouldn't argue for a big new expansion of government force restricting information over and above defamation law without really being able to think all this through IMO. Details really matter. Imagine the absolute worst populist wannabe dictators at not merely national scale but at the local small town scale that doesn't get much attention but has real power to affect people's lives. What are they going to do with this? Does it matter if they'd lose a 6-figure lawsuit in the end if no one they would go after can afford to fight it? That's not a theoretical threat. Anti-SLAPP laws help a lot by making things much cheaper thanks to a fairly straight forward (under defamation law) low pass filter. A judge can determine pretty easily if there is a colorable case or not. As the linked article says, "right to be forgotten" is complex and case-by-case, ie, expensive. And we know that "expensive lawsuit" means "bullies will use this for illegitimate ends", so we should be very cautious about opening up mass applicable complex new forms of action without really thinking it through.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RandomLensman 3y ago

Why not look what happened elsewhere where the right to be forgotten exists? Actual implementations might not turn out to be so dire.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

And do the "myriad tools" to combat disinformation stack up in this brave new era of LLMs dedicated to firehosing that disinformation far faster than you can combat it? Are you willing to put your reputation on the line to "steelman" your conviction? Do you get this worked up about simple link rot?

AJ007 3y ago

One of the challenges on HN is that the United States pretty much singularly has a very strong right to free speech as a part of law. The right to be forgotten is a very direct an unarguable violation of this. It isn't even debatable, and thus we are left debating free speech issues of which Europeans and Americans have very strong differences (in my opinion, anyone who is under an authoritarian government doesn't get to participate in the debate for censorship.) I don't know what is worse - that, for example, a Norweigen neo-Nazi mass murderer who will only serve 20 years in prison could erase the stories about them and that event ever occuring, or that someone who did something really dumb in college could usurp and override everyone else's right to free speech. The right to be forgotten rests on the premise that someone can be "reformed" and that their right to erase the past outweighs the rights of everyone else. The basic premise is someone did something really bad or embarrassing and they are too lazy to change their name (I have friends who have done that, due to an embarrassing newspaper article appearing Google.) I think we are headed toward a bifurcated interest. The reason that countries outside of the US have been able to compel American tech companies to do their bidding, to date, is because these companies are monopolies that generate massive amounts of cashflow doing things which are not impacted by that law (right to be forgotten does almost 0 to Google's income.) How is this going to work with LLM models? Keyword censorship can be inserted at the input and output levels, but you can make the LLM bypass that. These models will not be re-trained on demand. The open models can not be recalled. I suspect a lot of countries are about to be excluded from the next wave of innovation.

charles_f 3y ago

> there is a right to have others forget This is different from what the article (and ruling) are talking about. This is not about going in people's memory and deleting them, neurolizer style. It's not even talking to get the page down. It's talking about stopping to smear that person's name by advertising the publication. > There is no parallel in history Yes there is. If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue. Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down. If you are publish stuff about a corporation that is bad for them, you might be sued to take it down. Plenty of examples.

xoa 3y ago
>If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue Sure, but you're not going to get anywhere with your suit unless it's defamation. "Smearing" your name with something you actually did is (and or should be) protected speech. The article does not describe the confidential plaintiff winning a defamation lawsuit and forcing the material to be taken down from its source. And there would need to be no new "right to be forgotten" for that, that's just bog standard century old defamation law. All search engines and regular sites for that matter, anything that hosts 3rd party generated content, has (and is required to have by law) contacts and processes in place for taking down actual illegal material. The entire debate around this new thing is getting stuff you merely don't like but is entirely true hidden away. >Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down Which sounds like horrible to me and exactly the problem! If he plagiarized, why should he be able to get those videos taken down?
- dmbche 3y ago
  Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be defamatory, it's in the intent (or carelessness) to cause harm to another that it's decided to be defamation or not.
  - xoa 3y ago
    >Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be defamatory Not in the US it can't, truth is an absolute defense against defamation. And while sure, absolutely lots of countries don't respect free speech or support robust criticism very well, but I think those that don't are wrong. Hence why I included "(and or should be)", the ones that don't still should IMO.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 3y ago

The First Amendment is a fundamental of US society. It was the source of two of the "Four Freedoms" during WW2. Countries that infringe on the First Amendment rights of Americans are properly termed "enemies". Countries that are currently under the US nuclear umbrella should understand the cost of that protection.