Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic • Hacker News Board

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#61

Post by lightbyte » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #52

lightbyte wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we only forcing Google to remove this information when, as you say, it will still be in the public record. Why are journalists allowed to report on something that we aren't allowing a search engine to show?

Why are we only forcing Google to remove this information when, as you say, it will still be in the public record. Because ease of access makes all the difference, and it is disingenuous to argue otherwise. This law won't protect Trump from having his bankruptcies reported but it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because i…

>it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because it would otherwise have been the top hit when you google'd their name.

I don't agree that this will protect anyone, or that they need to be protected in the first place. This is just hiding the problem that someone would judge you for whatever the content is.

In my opinion the real solution here is to be more understanding to stupid things people have done in the past. Nobody is perfect, so why are you letting whatever that story on Google is affect your judgement of the person, assuming they learned from whatever it was.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#62

Post by kelnos » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #24

ballenf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you're almost asking about others' right to know about a person's past crimes. So I'll ask it: Should I be able to google my children's friends' parents before I let them spend the night over there? I use this case because it wouldn't provide the basis of legal background check and presumably google would be my only source of info. Or does the right to be forgotten not apply to child abuse crimes?

I mean, it's in the police blotter that's published in the newspaper. Assuming you still have a local newspaper, that is. I'm not specifically aware of whether this is the case, but I would hope that the results of deliberations by criminal courts is public information.

So you're seriously suggesting that someone should have to go to their local library and wade through years of back issues to see if their child's friend's parents have committed a crime? And also travel to whatever other places they've lived to do the same? All because blah blah right to be forgotten, so google etc. isn't allowed to index the relevant articles? That's absurd.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#63

Post by closeparen » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

algem wrote: post #46

landryraccoon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is forgetting the default instead of remembering? You assume that it's better for all of us if we default forget, but that's probably not how you treat your own information, or what you know about others. Isn't more transparency a good thing? Do the government, public figures, elected figures, law enforcement, your doctor and those who provide you medical care have the right to force you to forget everything abou…

so when you forgive someone you never forget? Sure you list some good examples to remember but there are far more reasons to forget. To remember should be meaningful. Should anything other people believe to be bad always be remembered of you? If this was the case everyone would hate everyone.

Reputation is the foundation of trust. If you can’t use the presence of absence of deragatory records as a signal, you need to be much more conservative in your dealings with people and create upfront constraints, since retroactive accountability isn’t an option.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#64

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #13

komali2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall from "The man who spent 100,000$ to remove himself from google," the "right to be forgotten" specifically targets falsehoods and lies. So no, Trump's bankruptcies won't be forgotten in this system, but a false accusation of child molestation can be.

But these guys were convicted of these crimes, no? That makes this information that's trying to be removed in this case pretty clearly not a lie. Unless i'm missing something here. I think i'm cautiously in favor of the standard you propose though, if that is indeed the standard.

[deleted]

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#65

Post by philipkglass » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #33

gressquel wrote: post #9

I am usually a advocate for privacy and right to be forgotten but in this case I am with Google. The criminals can easily erase their conviction and start 'scamming' victims again. Remember a time when I was looking for apartment and I Googled the name of the owner only to find news articles about how he had built 2 apartments inside one, even though they had no fire escape.

Criminals can not erase their conviction. At best they will be able to wipe out your ability to find out about that conviction. If you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check and not everybody gets to do background checks on everybody else for no particular reason. And that's a good thing.

According to what gressquel posted, they were doing a background check for a particular reason. If you meant "if you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check that costs money," then the "no particular reason" threshold for running a check depends strongly on the checker's financial resources.

Whatever balance between right to privacy and right to knowledge is struck, it should have uniform effects. The law shouldn't make it harder for a potential tenant to check the background of an apartment complex owner than for the owner to check the background of a potential tenant, even though in most cases the owner will have more money.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#66

Post by kelnos » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

gethesmane wrote: post #41

darawk wrote: post #2

Seems pretty journalistic to me. This "right to be forgotten" seems incredibly dangerous to me. Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Do we give child molesters the right for their crimes to be forgotten? Why should people have the right to have things they don't like wiped from the historical record? EDIT: I should point out, I do understand the other side. People shouldn't be punished…

Seems pretty journalistic to me. You might want to think about what the basic definition of "journalism" is, then. And how maintaining a relentlessly detailed, universally accessible dossier on the 1 percent of the population that qualifies as truly notable persons (such as politicians or notorious criminals) -- i.e. what traditional "journalists" do -- is in fact, quite different from ... maintaining such a dossier…

From a legal and censorship standpoint, I absolutely want entities like Google search to be defined as journalists.

Just because something falls under a legal classification, it doesn't mean we'd start calling Google search a journalist in colloquial usage.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#67

Post by bytematic » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

lightbyte wrote: post #30

Heliosmaster wrote: post #21

I see here a few comments criticizing the right to be forgotten, but I pose a question a bit differently. Let us assume somebody commits a crime. He goes to jail, he pays for it, as society deems necessary. A local newspaper reported it and now every time you google their name such an article pops up. This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw. It seems to me the debt to society has been paid by…

It sounds like the actual problem is >This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw. Hiding information from people sounds like a bandaid to the issue of people being overly judgemental. Maybe we need to be more accepting to rehabilitation.

That's not really a solution though.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#68

Post by bussierem » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

lightbyte wrote: post #61

gaius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we only forcing Google to remove this information when, as you say, it will still be in the public record. Because ease of access makes all the difference, and it is disingenuous to argue otherwise. This law won't protect Trump from having his bankruptcies reported but it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because i…

>it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because it would otherwise have been the top hit when you google'd their name. I don't agree that this will protect anyone, or that they need to be protected in the first place. This is just hiding the problem that someone would judge you for whatever the content is. In my opinion the…

>I don't agree that this will protect anyone, or that they need to be protected in the first place. This is just hiding the problem that someone would judge you for whatever the content is.

You can't deny that the advent of social media has brought about a MUCH bigger problem of people getting fired, judged, or their lives ruined by stupid mistakes, posts online of a single comment they made, etc. These things aren't _new_ occurrences. People have always made stupid remarks; people have always done stupid things. The difference now is that it's trivially easy for me to go find some idiotic thing you did as a teenage that you've outgrown, and point to it as a way to ruin your life if I want to. All it would cost me is a little money to Google or Facebook. Back in the day, an attempt to truly ruin someone's life like this would require _digging_. If the person deserves it to happen to them (which is almost never), then people will go through the effort. But for the casual assholes who think it funny to SWAT someone or to call up embarrassing photos because that person called them a bad word, this barrier to entry would prevent them from doing something about it.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#69

Post by megaman22 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #62

megaman22 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's in the police blotter that's published in the newspaper. Assuming you still have a local newspaper, that is. I'm not specifically aware of whether this is the case, but I would hope that the results of deliberations by criminal courts is public information.

So you're seriously suggesting that someone should have to go to their local library and wade through years of back issues to see if their child's friend's parents have committed a crime? And also travel to whatever other places they've lived to do the same? All because blah blah right to be forgotten, so google etc. isn't allowed to index the relevant articles? That's absurd.

That's almost exactly the opposite of what I'm arguing. I'd argue that previously, all of this information was on file, and accessible, and relatively well-known. Google delisting it is the weird, anomalous development.

Re: Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic

#70

Post by spadros » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

lightbyte wrote: post #61

gaius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we only forcing Google to remove this information when, as you say, it will still be in the public record. Because ease of access makes all the difference, and it is disingenuous to argue otherwise. This law won't protect Trump from having his bankruptcies reported but it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because i…

>it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because it would otherwise have been the top hit when you google'd their name. I don't agree that this will protect anyone, or that they need to be protected in the first place. This is just hiding the problem that someone would judge you for whatever the content is. In my opinion the…

That's not really the way business works, though. If one of your employees is the top result on Google for a dumb meme, it could be a liability to the business' image with clients. Hence, you don't take the risk of hiring them over someone else, even if the dumb memer is more qualified and a better fit overall. It simply wouldn't be worth the risk if there's other, less qualified but less risky, potential hires.