7 ms·

> (4) in the meantime, say stuff that you're prepared to stand by and pretend that 'online' is just like 'offline'. Online is not just like offline. At all. Si

> (4) in the meantime, say stuff that you're prepared to stand by and pretend that 'online' is just like 'offline'. Online is not just like offline. At all. Simply put, human beings are not made to have their beliefs set in stone. Also, anything you write can (and if you're famous, will) be used against you. It's an extremely stressful environment. I've been harassed by a troll in a forum where I had my personal information spelled out. In 50 years, people will still have access to me trying to put some sense into a crazy user. I will never treat online like offline again and I suggest everyone not to be so naive. Instead, I fully agree with point 3.

gaius 12y ago
Dejanews took a lot of people by surprise, things that were said on Usenet, no one ever expected to become part of their permanent record. That is why it is so important that the EU is able to enforce the "right to be forgotten" on Google et al.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  How do you propose that would be enacted in this case? How to force google to forget the contents of your comments but not the rest of the page? I'm all for the 'right to be forgotten', it seems a useful counterbalance to the ease with which data is vacuumed up and re-packaged for easy consumption by seeker and stalker alike but I fear there will be a lot of practical problems implementing this. One thing I have a lot with reocities is people asking to have specific guest book entries deleted from geobook pages. This is a ton of work to do right and even then it doesn't really help due to the enormous amount of data copying that has happened. It's pretty double because I get at least as many requests from people that want to retrieve stuff that is irreparably lost. Digitally forgetting something is hard to get right, almost harder than keeping it in the first place.
  - drakenot 12y ago
    Allow users to delete their account. Then display "[deleted]" for the username in the comment threads. If you want the names to ensure they stay unique in a given thread you could generate a new token for the user and show something like "[deleted-xS72d]". This would allow users to disassociate their comments with their online handle but not screw up the old threads by deleting the actual content.
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      Although then someone might set up a mapping file saying "deleted-xS72d equals ptaipale" and 10000 similar records. It might be illegal in EU countries, but that doesn't stop it from happening somewhere in the US, or China, or South America, or whatever. I've faced similar requests on a small board that I maintain, and there's no very good solution that wouldn't break the right of others to keep their own submissions intact and meaningful.
      - geographomics 12y ago
        Could make the deleted-suffix unique for every thread of comments, this would be a reasonable balance between allowing the interplay of conversation participants to be left unscathed, and preventing tracking/correlation of comments across the entire site.
- RexRollman 12y ago
  "The right to be forgotten" is one of the most asinine things I have ever of. It really should be called "The right to supress history".
  - gaius 12y ago
    Nonsense. Not even that long ago a person could get a fresh start by moving to another town, or even just by waiting a few years for the memory of whatever thing they did that they regret, to fade in most peoples minds. Now it can follow you forever. How is that right? We expunge criminal records even - but not anymore if it shows up top hit on Google.
  - krapp 12y ago
    I find it a bit odd that this view is as prevalent as it seems on HN. "The right to be forgotten" is nothing more or less than the right to have some control over your identity, and over the ability of third parties to leverage that identity for their own ends. To argue that governments and companies should be forced or obligated to maintain long-term, fine grained surveillance for the sake of "history" is kind of absurd. In any other context, HN would be up in arms over the same, with many going out of their way to exercise exactly that "right" through the use of anonymizing tools or proxies.
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      The people objecting to "right to be forgotten" are not saying that companies should be forced or obligated to maintain long term surveillance. That's quite the non sequitar.
      - krapp 12y ago
        Many do seem to be insisting that search results and online information be preserved as a record of 'truthfulness' in case they need to be used against someone legally or in the court of public opinion (like a politician or a celebrity who wants a scandal 'erased' or who wants to redact some statement or opinion of theirs.) By definition, this assumes the ability to correlate this data with real life identities (otherwise the whole argument is pointless) for as long as it's relevant. That seems to me like an implied obligation to maintain a surveillance system (or state) in all but name.
jacquesm 12y ago
Offline as in: the written word, offline. The dutch have a proverb (they have proverbs for everything) 'who writes, stays'. Of course what's said offline is vastly different from what's written online. But it would be good to take into account that that does not only go for public fora: it also goes for email, IM, skype chats, IRC and so on. Basically anything that you enter on a keyboard can come back to haunt you one day.
- Morgawr 12y ago
  Verba volant, scripta manent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent

gaius 12y ago

Dejanews took a lot of people by surprise, things that were said on Usenet, no one ever expected to become part of their permanent record. That is why it is so important that the EU is able to enforce the "right to be forgotten" on Google et al.

jacquesm 12y ago
How do you propose that would be enacted in this case? How to force google to forget the contents of your comments but not the rest of the page? I'm all for the 'right to be forgotten', it seems a useful counterbalance to the ease with which data is vacuumed up and re-packaged for easy consumption by seeker and stalker alike but I fear there will be a lot of practical problems implementing this. One thing I have a lot with reocities is people asking to have specific guest book entries deleted from geobook pages. This is a ton of work to do right and even then it doesn't really help due to the enormous amount of data copying that has happened. It's pretty double because I get at least as many requests from people that want to retrieve stuff that is irreparably lost. Digitally forgetting something is hard to get right, almost harder than keeping it in the first place.
- drakenot 12y ago
  Allow users to delete their account. Then display "[deleted]" for the username in the comment threads. If you want the names to ensure they stay unique in a given thread you could generate a new token for the user and show something like "[deleted-xS72d]". This would allow users to disassociate their comments with their online handle but not screw up the old threads by deleting the actual content.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    Although then someone might set up a mapping file saying "deleted-xS72d equals ptaipale" and 10000 similar records. It might be illegal in EU countries, but that doesn't stop it from happening somewhere in the US, or China, or South America, or whatever. I've faced similar requests on a small board that I maintain, and there's no very good solution that wouldn't break the right of others to keep their own submissions intact and meaningful.
    - geographomics 12y ago
      Could make the deleted-suffix unique for every thread of comments, this would be a reasonable balance between allowing the interplay of conversation participants to be left unscathed, and preventing tracking/correlation of comments across the entire site.
RexRollman 12y ago
"The right to be forgotten" is one of the most asinine things I have ever of. It really should be called "The right to supress history".
- gaius 12y ago
  Nonsense. Not even that long ago a person could get a fresh start by moving to another town, or even just by waiting a few years for the memory of whatever thing they did that they regret, to fade in most peoples minds. Now it can follow you forever. How is that right? We expunge criminal records even - but not anymore if it shows up top hit on Google.
- krapp 12y ago
  I find it a bit odd that this view is as prevalent as it seems on HN. "The right to be forgotten" is nothing more or less than the right to have some control over your identity, and over the ability of third parties to leverage that identity for their own ends. To argue that governments and companies should be forced or obligated to maintain long-term, fine grained surveillance for the sake of "history" is kind of absurd. In any other context, HN would be up in arms over the same, with many going out of their way to exercise exactly that "right" through the use of anonymizing tools or proxies.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    The people objecting to "right to be forgotten" are not saying that companies should be forced or obligated to maintain long term surveillance. That's quite the non sequitar.
    - krapp 12y ago
      Many do seem to be insisting that search results and online information be preserved as a record of 'truthfulness' in case they need to be used against someone legally or in the court of public opinion (like a politician or a celebrity who wants a scandal 'erased' or who wants to redact some statement or opinion of theirs.) By definition, this assumes the ability to correlate this data with real life identities (otherwise the whole argument is pointless) for as long as it's relevant. That seems to me like an implied obligation to maintain a surveillance system (or state) in all but name.

jacquesm 12y ago

Offline as in: the written word, offline. The dutch have a proverb (they have proverbs for everything) 'who writes, stays'. Of course what's said offline is vastly different from what's written online. But it would be good to take into account that that does not only go for public fora: it also goes for email, IM, skype chats, IRC and so on. Basically anything that you enter on a keyboard can come back to haunt you one day.

Morgawr 12y ago
Verba volant, scripta manent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent