8 ms·

Google's questionnaire response to Article 29 Working Party

42 points by jontro 12y ago

jontro 12y ago
It's interesting that they have already received 91000 removal requests involving more than 320 000 urls. 53% of these have been removed, this is having a big impact...
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Not really. Google returns millions of results for every search. 320,000 urls isn't a lot and the number of people that were searching for this stuff and were effected is probably quite low.
  - kubiiii 12y ago
    It depends on each url popularity, I doubt any of the requests deals with a ressource you would find on the 500 th page of a search result.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  EU citizens will have the search results censored but the rest of the world will not, nor will any European who is mildly tech savvy. How is this not useless whack-a-mole?
  - jontro 12y ago
    As the documents states: "Fewer than 5% of European users use google.com, and we think travelers are a significant portion of those." So this affects pretty much all europeans.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Do you believe that most Europeans won't know that their search results are being censored? Or that they won't care?
      - gcp 12y ago
        Yes?
      - heinrich5991 12y ago
        Or maybe that they agree with the intentions of that law.
        happyscrappy 12y ago
        My point is that even if you agree with the intentions of the law it will not prevent Europeans from finding the truth if they want it.
        kuschku 12y ago
        But that's not what the law aims for either. It's just supposed to make finding those results harder, so that you don't accidentally stumble upon them, but have to actually search for them.
        DannyBee 12y ago
        ??? It's exactly the opposite If you actually search for them, you get nothing. If you stumble around, you may find them.
        walshemj 12y ago
        I certainly don't its a "pious" law written by people with zero grasp of reality - the same ones that gave us the cookie law.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    So what if it's useless whack-a-mole? It's compliant with an EU ruling. It'll keep a few people happy where those people used to think they were the subjects of harassment before. That will stop those people using the police for this stuff. (Front line police in England spend maybe half their time dealing with online harassment, bullying, threats, trolling, etc).
- timdierks 12y ago
  Note also that the URLs themselves are not removed from the search corpus; instead, they are elided from results when they are matches for a search with a particular name in them. The URLs themselves are still eligible to be returned in response to queries that don't include the specific name.
  - yebyen 12y ago
    Opportunity to resolve the public interest for SEO guys? What did they call it in High School yearbooks, the superlatives page? I was trying to remember who are the "litigious bastards" but Google and Urban Dictionary remembered it for me... There was an effort (I can't find the link) to create a catalog of all of the links and terms that it was requested for Google to forget. Some folks (not me, but some folks I'm sure) could spend a long time coming up with the best search terms for the most egregious "bad examples" of people demanding to be forgotten in this way, how hard could it be to make sure they show up in the top results? :)
    - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
      http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/ http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/
socrates1998 12y ago
I just don't get this law. It's so shortsighted and really will only benefit the rich elite who can hire lawyers to enforce it. Think about it. If a common joe asks to have a link removed, but google doesn't do it, what can he do? He has to hire a lawyer to get it removed. So, the only people that can afford this process are the rich elite. And then you have the rich elite essentially censoring the internet on stuff they don't want you to know about. It just doesn't make any sense at all.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Shinkei 12y ago
I really have to rant about the idiocy of this law. For full disclosure, I am American. They call it a "right to be forgotten," but guess what, I have a right to information (speech, press, etc.) that I think supercedes this supposed right which I've never heard of before this law. People need to learn to live with their mistakes and be more careful about their actions. If a person (to cite the specific example commonly mentioned) went into bankruptcy due to economic issues, poor investment or even 'bad luck' then that is a matter of legal proceedings and should be public record. I can certainly understand things like nude photos, sex tapes, etc. but we already have legal means of dealing with those examples. Can someone convince me why this law is necessary and in the public interest? Edit: Took out statement about Chinese censorship because people were attacking that rather than the substance of THIS law.
- spingsprong 12y ago
  Chinese censorship exists to protect the state. EU right to be forgotten protects the individual. That's a pretty huge difference.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    So it's a good ol' ends justify the means argument. That certainly never turns out badly ...
    - spingsprong 12y ago
      I didn't make any argument
      - spingsprong 12y ago
        I find that downvote really funny.
      - DannyBee 12y ago
        Uh? This is surely an argument. You are arguing that using the same means (censorship) to achieve two different end goals (protecting the individual, protecting the state), are very different situations. You imply that they should be looked at very differently. If you don't want it to be an argument, simply state the facts, and remove, among other things the "that's a pretty huge difference" statement.
michaelfeathers 12y ago
They could make the argument that Google (and other search engines) essentially re-publish information so it's appropriate to make them responsible. I think that point of view is one that many in the tech community don't share. We see it as collating results rather than publishing information. That difference of viewpoint is very significant when you think about it.

42 points by jontro 12y ago

It's interesting that they have already received 91000 removal requests involving more than 320 000 urls. 53% of these have been removed, this is having a big impact...

k-mcgrady 12y ago
Not really. Google returns millions of results for every search. 320,000 urls isn't a lot and the number of people that were searching for this stuff and were effected is probably quite low.
- kubiiii 12y ago
  It depends on each url popularity, I doubt any of the requests deals with a ressource you would find on the 500 th page of a search result.
happyscrappy 12y ago
EU citizens will have the search results censored but the rest of the world will not, nor will any European who is mildly tech savvy. How is this not useless whack-a-mole?
- jontro 12y ago
  As the documents states: "Fewer than 5% of European users use google.com, and we think travelers are a significant portion of those." So this affects pretty much all europeans.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Do you believe that most Europeans won't know that their search results are being censored? Or that they won't care?
    - gcp 12y ago
      Yes?
    - heinrich5991 12y ago
      Or maybe that they agree with the intentions of that law.
      - happyscrappy 12y ago
        My point is that even if you agree with the intentions of the law it will not prevent Europeans from finding the truth if they want it.
        kuschku 12y ago
        But that's not what the law aims for either. It's just supposed to make finding those results harder, so that you don't accidentally stumble upon them, but have to actually search for them.
        DannyBee 12y ago
        ??? It's exactly the opposite If you actually search for them, you get nothing. If you stumble around, you may find them.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        I certainly don't its a "pious" law written by people with zero grasp of reality - the same ones that gave us the cookie law.
- DanBC 12y ago
  So what if it's useless whack-a-mole? It's compliant with an EU ruling. It'll keep a few people happy where those people used to think they were the subjects of harassment before. That will stop those people using the police for this stuff. (Front line police in England spend maybe half their time dealing with online harassment, bullying, threats, trolling, etc).
timdierks 12y ago
Note also that the URLs themselves are not removed from the search corpus; instead, they are elided from results when they are matches for a search with a particular name in them. The URLs themselves are still eligible to be returned in response to queries that don't include the specific name.
- yebyen 12y ago
  Opportunity to resolve the public interest for SEO guys? What did they call it in High School yearbooks, the superlatives page? I was trying to remember who are the "litigious bastards" but Google and Urban Dictionary remembered it for me... There was an effort (I can't find the link) to create a catalog of all of the links and terms that it was requested for Google to forget. Some folks (not me, but some folks I'm sure) could spend a long time coming up with the best search terms for the most egregious "bad examples" of people demanding to be forgotten in this way, how hard could it be to make sure they show up in the top results? :)
  - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
    http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/ http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/

socrates1998 12y ago

I just don't get this law. It's so shortsighted and really will only benefit the rich elite who can hire lawyers to enforce it. Think about it. If a common joe asks to have a link removed, but google doesn't do it, what can he do? He has to hire a lawyer to get it removed. So, the only people that can afford this process are the rich elite. And then you have the rich elite essentially censoring the internet on stuff they don't want you to know about. It just doesn't make any sense at all.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Shinkei 12y ago

I really have to rant about the idiocy of this law. For full disclosure, I am American. They call it a "right to be forgotten," but guess what, I have a right to information (speech, press, etc.) that I think supercedes this supposed right which I've never heard of before this law. People need to learn to live with their mistakes and be more careful about their actions. If a person (to cite the specific example commonly mentioned) went into bankruptcy due to economic issues, poor investment or even 'bad luck' then that is a matter of legal proceedings and should be public record. I can certainly understand things like nude photos, sex tapes, etc. but we already have legal means of dealing with those examples. Can someone convince me why this law is necessary and in the public interest? Edit: Took out statement about Chinese censorship because people were attacking that rather than the substance of THIS law.

spingsprong 12y ago
Chinese censorship exists to protect the state. EU right to be forgotten protects the individual. That's a pretty huge difference.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  So it's a good ol' ends justify the means argument. That certainly never turns out badly ...
  - spingsprong 12y ago
    I didn't make any argument
    - spingsprong 12y ago
      I find that downvote really funny.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      Uh? This is surely an argument. You are arguing that using the same means (censorship) to achieve two different end goals (protecting the individual, protecting the state), are very different situations. You imply that they should be looked at very differently. If you don't want it to be an argument, simply state the facts, and remove, among other things the "that's a pretty huge difference" statement.

michaelfeathers 12y ago

They could make the argument that Google (and other search engines) essentially re-publish information so it's appropriate to make them responsible. I think that point of view is one that many in the tech community don't share. We see it as collating results rather than publishing information. That difference of viewpoint is very significant when you think about it.