7 ms·

Please note that this is not so much about the basic principle of the 'right to be forgotten', but the way in which Google is deliberately turning it into a blo

Please note that this is not so much about the basic principle of the 'right to be forgotten', but the way in which Google is deliberately turning it into a bloodbath. Google is constantly looking to create controversy and undermine any kind of privacy rights enforcement rather than being constructive in finding solutions. Google has every right to ignore all but the most obviously justified removal requests and only remove results after a court order. They are deliberately taking an axe to the search results in an attempt to make EU privacy protection look like censorship.

themartorana 12y ago
Because it is censorship, to the definition. It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past. Besides, at the volume at which the requests have poured in, even Google has limited time and resources to fight each request in court. It's unrealistic to expect them to actually fight any takedown individually when the entire idea is absurd. Yes, I added my opinion at the end there.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past" I think the difference is that newspapers probably never would have printed half the stuff people want removed in the first place. You would also be able to sue a newspaper and have corrections printed. Probably not as easy with online content if posted anonymously. I think a big part of the problem is the different attitudes to free speech around the world. In the US it is top priority. In the UK people are legally punished for posting harassing or threatening messages on social media. In France/Germany there are laws are speech on the holocaust and anti-Semitism. I think free speech is important but I also think we can regulate it to a point and that's not an attitude that would fly in some countries, particularly the US (my opinion is changing slightly as it become more and more obvious we can't trust our governments). The internet being a global thing we are going to face these problems more and more.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    Actually, the whole legal issue started with a case of mr. Mario Costeja González wanting to remove a google search that returned news that was printed in a newspaper, and after suing the newspaper no corrections were printed and the article wasn't recalled as it was truthful, non-anonymous, etc. The newspaper article is still available in the archives, but Google has been given an order to hide it from people. It's not a hypothetical issue - the "anonymous online speech" is a red herring as the very first censored link was removing a link to a truthful newspaper article, and the BBC removed links are again censoring undisputed respectable news article history.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  > It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past. Except that before the Internet was a thing, in general, if you did something that got you in the newspaper five years ago, nobody would remember it when you're applying for a job or networking or somehow get in the news again, doubly so if you moved town. These days, it's likely that if you were in the news once, that baggage is likely to be attached to you forever; it can quite literally ruin your life. That's quite a massive difference if you ask me.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    Which enabled many a serial con man to milk people indefinitely. Yes, there are disadvantages to easy access to information like this. There are advantages as well, though.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    So what's the end game where everyone has that level of "dirt" on them? Doesn't it become a lot less extraordinary (and therefore, a lot less "life ruining") if everyone's publicly-documented bad behavior is accessible? FWIW, I see this as blatant censorship.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      Except that that isn't the case. Not nearly everyone ends up getting written about in a blog or a newspaper, as much as that might be the case in your social circle. However, some not-insignificant amount of people do.
      - Karunamon 12y ago
        The amount of writing and access to that writing has only gone up over time, and that's almost universally seen as a net positive. I just don't see the positive in a world where actions don't have consequences since the collective unconscious can be selectively edited by legislative meddling. The idea of a "right to be forgotten" is so fundamentally alien to me, as someone who fundamentally believes in the rights of freedom of speech and free access to infofrmation, as if the subject of a given piece of information somehow has ownership of it, rather than the person who created it.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  It's very different. Searching an archive takes time and effort. Using a search engine takes virtually none.
franze 12y ago
>Google has every right to ignore no, they tried this, they ended up in front of the European Court of Justice and lost.
- quonn 12y ago
  Why is this downvoted? I think Google has to delete you from the index if you wish, without any special justification or court order.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Google only accept about a third of the requests to delist.
Kalium 12y ago
>Google is constantly looking to create controversy and undermine any kind of privacy rights enforcement rather than being constructive in finding solutions. It's a magical "censor whatever I say" button. What kind of constructive solution do you imagine?
- gnopgnip 12y ago
  This is a straw man, the laws are much more specific in what they would forget.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    It removes entire articles from the public consciousness. There's no "remove this section". There's not even the accountability to tell the publications what's being removed and who wants it gone. It's power without responsibility, accountability, or sane restraints.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    The original article contains an actual example from BBC of how "specific" they are - a valid news article was censored because of a complaint about a comment to that article. It's not a misinformed hypothesis of what might somehow happen, it's something that has already happened. This is not a straw man. Either the laws aren't as specific as you expect, or they aren't applied as specifically as you expect - censoring an article if there is absolutely nothing wrong within the actual article is certainly not specific enough.
    - barsoap 12y ago
      The article wasn't censored, it just doesn't show up any more when you search for the name of the commenter. It still shows up when you search for the name of the banker that was the subject of the article, the name of the bank, or any other keywords you can find it with: All that has been eradicated is the searchable connection between the commenter's name and that article.
      - 12y ago
ghaff 12y ago
Based on what's been published, Google's response seems pretty rational. They are denying some reasonable percentage of requests while complying with others. I don't like the EU policy here and I'd fight it vigorously if the topic come up in the US, but Google seems to be neither simply complying with everything nor taking everything to court. It seems a rational response by a corporation whatever its execs may think of the governing law.
sesutton 12y ago
The problem is that Google has no incentive to be careful in choosing which links it removes. There is no penalty for removing links unnecessarily but there is the potential for EU member states to levy fines for not removing them.
fidotron 12y ago
There is more than an element of truth to this, uncomfortable as it is for many. Google are deliberately stonewalling on this and issues around copyright, basically with a "If it's good for us then it must be right" attitude, which is actually in danger of creating widespread economic problems much worse than Microsoft ever achieved. It's interesting to compare the response here with the vitriol Uber receive. Google's PR machine is very good.
- pluma 12y ago
  I think one factor is that Google is very nebulous. Facebook's and Uber's ambitions are pretty obvious and easy to understand. Google is a search company and an advertising company, but it is also a social network and a cloud storage provider and a thousand other things. And some of its products aren't even gratuitously Google-branded (e.g. YouTube -- even if it's more integrated into Google+ now). Sure, there is a vague awareness that Google is invading your privacy and harvesting your data, but it does so for "free" and generally makes it look like a good deal. It's also a lot more subtle about it than Facebook. Google isn't morally superior. It's just less obviously evil. And let's be honest: to the average bloke (even on HN), the problems with Uber or Airbnb are a lot easier to relate to than the much fuzzier problems with Google (privacy, media licensing, etc).
bobcostas55 12y ago
Some of the very first usages of the "right to be forgotten" was by politicians hiding their past criminal activity. If that's not censorship I don't know what is.
pessimizer 12y ago
>Google has every right to ignore all but the most obviously justified removal requests and only remove results after a court order. If it wants to sink massive amounts of money, time, risk for other operations, and goodwill from powerful people in order to avoid doing something that won't affect its bottom line in the slightest way to just do. >They are deliberately taking an axe to the search results in an attempt to make EU privacy protection look like censorship. No, they're accepting censorship because there's no money in being freedom fighters.

themartorana 12y ago

Because it is censorship, to the definition. It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past. Besides, at the volume at which the requests have poured in, even Google has limited time and resources to fight each request in court. It's unrealistic to expect them to actually fight any takedown individually when the entire idea is absurd. Yes, I added my opinion at the end there.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past" I think the difference is that newspapers probably never would have printed half the stuff people want removed in the first place. You would also be able to sue a newspaper and have corrections printed. Probably not as easy with online content if posted anonymously. I think a big part of the problem is the different attitudes to free speech around the world. In the US it is top priority. In the UK people are legally punished for posting harassing or threatening messages on social media. In France/Germany there are laws are speech on the holocaust and anti-Semitism. I think free speech is important but I also think we can regulate it to a point and that's not an attitude that would fly in some countries, particularly the US (my opinion is changing slightly as it become more and more obvious we can't trust our governments). The internet being a global thing we are going to face these problems more and more.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  Actually, the whole legal issue started with a case of mr. Mario Costeja González wanting to remove a google search that returned news that was printed in a newspaper, and after suing the newspaper no corrections were printed and the article wasn't recalled as it was truthful, non-anonymous, etc. The newspaper article is still available in the archives, but Google has been given an order to hide it from people. It's not a hypothetical issue - the "anonymous online speech" is a red herring as the very first censored link was removing a link to a truthful newspaper article, and the BBC removed links are again censoring undisputed respectable news article history.
vertex-four 12y ago
> It's no different than requiring the removal of newspaper archives from public libraries to articles from the past. Except that before the Internet was a thing, in general, if you did something that got you in the newspaper five years ago, nobody would remember it when you're applying for a job or networking or somehow get in the news again, doubly so if you moved town. These days, it's likely that if you were in the news once, that baggage is likely to be attached to you forever; it can quite literally ruin your life. That's quite a massive difference if you ask me.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  Which enabled many a serial con man to milk people indefinitely. Yes, there are disadvantages to easy access to information like this. There are advantages as well, though.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  So what's the end game where everyone has that level of "dirt" on them? Doesn't it become a lot less extraordinary (and therefore, a lot less "life ruining") if everyone's publicly-documented bad behavior is accessible? FWIW, I see this as blatant censorship.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Except that that isn't the case. Not nearly everyone ends up getting written about in a blog or a newspaper, as much as that might be the case in your social circle. However, some not-insignificant amount of people do.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      The amount of writing and access to that writing has only gone up over time, and that's almost universally seen as a net positive. I just don't see the positive in a world where actions don't have consequences since the collective unconscious can be selectively edited by legislative meddling. The idea of a "right to be forgotten" is so fundamentally alien to me, as someone who fundamentally believes in the rights of freedom of speech and free access to infofrmation, as if the subject of a given piece of information somehow has ownership of it, rather than the person who created it.
anigbrowl 12y ago
It's very different. Searching an archive takes time and effort. Using a search engine takes virtually none.

franze 12y ago

>Google has every right to ignore no, they tried this, they ended up in front of the European Court of Justice and lost.

quonn 12y ago
Why is this downvoted? I think Google has to delete you from the index if you wish, without any special justification or court order.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Google only accept about a third of the requests to delist.

Kalium 12y ago

>Google is constantly looking to create controversy and undermine any kind of privacy rights enforcement rather than being constructive in finding solutions. It's a magical "censor whatever I say" button. What kind of constructive solution do you imagine?

gnopgnip 12y ago
This is a straw man, the laws are much more specific in what they would forget.
- Kalium 12y ago
  It removes entire articles from the public consciousness. There's no "remove this section". There's not even the accountability to tell the publications what's being removed and who wants it gone. It's power without responsibility, accountability, or sane restraints.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  The original article contains an actual example from BBC of how "specific" they are - a valid news article was censored because of a complaint about a comment to that article. It's not a misinformed hypothesis of what might somehow happen, it's something that has already happened. This is not a straw man. Either the laws aren't as specific as you expect, or they aren't applied as specifically as you expect - censoring an article if there is absolutely nothing wrong within the actual article is certainly not specific enough.
  - barsoap 12y ago
    The article wasn't censored, it just doesn't show up any more when you search for the name of the commenter. It still shows up when you search for the name of the banker that was the subject of the article, the name of the bank, or any other keywords you can find it with: All that has been eradicated is the searchable connection between the commenter's name and that article.
    - 12y ago

ghaff 12y ago

Based on what's been published, Google's response seems pretty rational. They are denying some reasonable percentage of requests while complying with others. I don't like the EU policy here and I'd fight it vigorously if the topic come up in the US, but Google seems to be neither simply complying with everything nor taking everything to court. It seems a rational response by a corporation whatever its execs may think of the governing law.

sesutton 12y ago

The problem is that Google has no incentive to be careful in choosing which links it removes. There is no penalty for removing links unnecessarily but there is the potential for EU member states to levy fines for not removing them.

fidotron 12y ago

There is more than an element of truth to this, uncomfortable as it is for many. Google are deliberately stonewalling on this and issues around copyright, basically with a "If it's good for us then it must be right" attitude, which is actually in danger of creating widespread economic problems much worse than Microsoft ever achieved. It's interesting to compare the response here with the vitriol Uber receive. Google's PR machine is very good.

pluma 12y ago
I think one factor is that Google is very nebulous. Facebook's and Uber's ambitions are pretty obvious and easy to understand. Google is a search company and an advertising company, but it is also a social network and a cloud storage provider and a thousand other things. And some of its products aren't even gratuitously Google-branded (e.g. YouTube -- even if it's more integrated into Google+ now). Sure, there is a vague awareness that Google is invading your privacy and harvesting your data, but it does so for "free" and generally makes it look like a good deal. It's also a lot more subtle about it than Facebook. Google isn't morally superior. It's just less obviously evil. And let's be honest: to the average bloke (even on HN), the problems with Uber or Airbnb are a lot easier to relate to than the much fuzzier problems with Google (privacy, media licensing, etc).

bobcostas55 12y ago

Some of the very first usages of the "right to be forgotten" was by politicians hiding their past criminal activity. If that's not censorship I don't know what is.

pessimizer 12y ago

>Google has every right to ignore all but the most obviously justified removal requests and only remove results after a court order. If it wants to sink massive amounts of money, time, risk for other operations, and goodwill from powerful people in order to avoid doing something that won't affect its bottom line in the slightest way to just do. >They are deliberately taking an axe to the search results in an attempt to make EU privacy protection look like censorship. No, they're accepting censorship because there's no money in being freedom fighters.