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

#291

Post by acct1771 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

1337biz wrote: post #191

guelo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google didn't post it why would you go after Google? Tell whoever posted it or whoever is hosting it to take it down.

Because Google makes it easy to find. Nobody cares about some rant about you by an anonymous customer, or just your ex partner when it is on page 73. But if it is on page 1 and the other party refuses to take it down you just feed an endless army of lawyers.

That's when you get your page, with your side of the story, ranked #2, or at least page 1.

That's the nature of the internet. The great equalizer

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

#292

Post by zbentley » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:28 PM UTC

anoncoward7780 wrote: post #230

losteric wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google cannot become our only source of truth, but should we eliminate it as a source of truth? What about other search engines? Social media shares? What happens when a journalist publishes an article based on offline investigation, does the right to be forgotten still apply? Search engines need to fight libelous SEO attacks, but this is a deeply unsettling over-reaction. Let's drop the Orwellian phrasing and call i…

Do you understand the Diff between a search engine and "Public Record"? "knowledge is power, and search engines are the map". Hey kid, there's a whole world out there that's not your google. Libraries have books, City Hall has public records. How about get off your butt and learn how real research is done. Hint: it's not on facebook, google, or twitter.

Rather a lot of journalists and writers (and an increasing number of academics) would disagree with you...

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

#293

Post by drdaeman » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:41 PM UTC

bringtheaction wrote: post #259

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that simple. Just the same as in real life. If you're "saying, likeing, sharing" things that "don't represent who you are" maybe you should take some time for introspection rather than demand the world to follow your narrative. Information you, yourself, post publicly to the internet is public. Just the same as if you got up in Times Square and shouted it using a megaphone. Information that is factually accurat…

> If you want to control your narrative, maybe don't post thoughtlessly and publicly. I am not posting thoughtlessly. What I am saying is that there is just a million ways that anything can be interpreted in the future that you have no way of foreseeing.

Even a silence can be interpreted in such manner. Should we be able to retrospectively edit the past if it somehow concerns us? Seriously, given how stirred up things are, it's not unrealistic to imagine that someone would want you to "feel guilty" of not posting something in the past.

This is not a tech problem (at all). This is a social problem that had existed since forever, but now uncovered by technology's availability. And if the agreed solution to the "world's gone mad" is to grant one legal ability to alter other's memories, then the world's truly gone mad.

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

#294

Post by Hoagy » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:48 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #54

I see a lot of people claim that this is just about having information at the top of a search result, and I agree that's better than outright censorship. But, I still take some small amount of umbrage with people claiming that nothing is being erased, just people's ability to find it. I think that's a very blurry line to draw - the idea the it's OK for information to exist somewhere in the void, but making it too eas…

I agree with this. I am surprised that rather than trying to define itself as journalistic, Google isn't trying to present itself as an archivist (I am unaware if this has any legal meaning).

I wonder what would happen if an explicitly archival service like the Wayback Machine got itself a state of the art search algorithm and became widely used in casual search. Would it also be required to delist?

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

#295

Post by Sacho » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #177

lightbyte wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe instead of relying on humans to suddently act differently than they ever have in thousands of years, we could just remove the stupid link. I mean, listen to yourself. Rather than an easy, technical solution, for a very limited and well defined problem, you're proposing we instead just wait until the billions upon billions of people on earth suddenly wise up, hit nirvana, sing Kum ba yah, and _be less judgementa…

But there is no law that is crafted for this "very limited and well defined problem". "Right to be forgotten" goes much further than that. I can tentatively agree that for your proposed situation, it's unfair enough to former felons that it may require government intervention. Unfortunately, there's just no legislation that is focused and limited in scope in this regard; instead, the move is to broader, looser and vaguer laws like the GDPR.

If we have to consider the reality of the situation for felons, we must also face the reality that they don't really seem to be the end goal, but just a story to placate worries about overregulation and censorship.

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

#296

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #40

jbigelow76 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we give Trump the right for his bankruptcies to be forgotten? Removed from google != removed from public record. If google has become our only source of information we are pretty much screwed. If Trump were to have his bankruptcies "forgotten" by google then journalists would still report when relevant since he is a celebrity/(sigh)politician, and any entities considering doing business with him or anyone shou…

Google cannot become our only source of truth, but should we eliminate it as a source of truth? What about other search engines? Social media shares? What happens when a journalist publishes an article based on offline investigation, does the right to be forgotten still apply? Search engines need to fight libelous SEO attacks, but this is a deeply unsettling over-reaction. Let's drop the Orwellian phrasing and call i…

the point of the right to be forgotten is if you did something stupid at some point and it is always available and super easy to find then anyone can always look you up and say hey did a stupid thing let's not hire them or maybe we should proactive and do something to them because the stupid thing was not just stupid but also maybe bad.

So yes it is the right to hide the past to the extent that it should not be super easy to get all available dirt on anyone at any time anybody gets nosy or irritated. But if you are willing to put in weeks of work to find out that someone once smoked pot or burned an american flag or whatever you can still put in those weeks of work.

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

#297

Post by sakabaro » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #177

lightbyte wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe instead of relying on humans to suddently act differently than they ever have in thousands of years, we could just remove the stupid link. I mean, listen to yourself. Rather than an easy, technical solution, for a very limited and well defined problem, you're proposing we instead just wait until the billions upon billions of people on earth suddenly wise up, hit nirvana, sing Kum ba yah, and _be less judgementa…

> Rather than an easy, technical solution

If I am a search engine, and don’t comply, I am going to jail. It’s not easy nor technical.

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

#298

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #233

spunker540 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn’t that the content exists- it’s that google surfaces it.

"The problem isn't that someone lit my house on fire - it's that I can see the fire"

Probably the problem description should be something that is legal in most places but would cause real problems for anyone caught doing it.

so let's say Eric was out drunk with his friends and they walked in a sex shop and picked up some dildos because hah hah this shit is funny we are so drunk and then Eric took some silly photos cuddling the dildo or mimicking putting it in his ass and someone posted it to the internet and now eric would like it gone.

Now Eric's pictures on the internet are actually sort of funny so they have gotten some exposure, and so Eric finds he can't keep his job at the local macho place of employment - I don't know why, maybe he's not good at talking shit to anyone who talks shit to him so everybody picks on him about his stupid funny photos.

So he gets fired or quits because can't handle the harassment, and is sick of going out and hearing hey it's dildo guy. So he moves away. Nobody in his new town know's he's dildo guy, but then he goes out one night with this girl, and somebody exclaims omg it's that dildo guy, hey look at this everybody I got me some google skills, I saw this hilarious picture one time.

Now on the one hand Eric has given the world a lot of (unpaid) entertainment as dildo guy, but on the other hand when he commits suicide because he is emotionally unconstituted to go through life being called out every now and then as dildo guy then he makes people feel bad. So in order to allow Eric to make his stupid drunk dildo hugging photo and not ruin the rest of his life for something embarrassing but totally legal let's just give him the right to remove the stuff from google. That way, when he moves from his old town where there are lots of people remembering the whole dildo picture situation, in his new town people didn't know him when it was fresh and his stupidity is somehow 'forgotten' thus preserving the ability that people have had throughout history of moving from one area because their reputation at that area had become to problematic to continue. Google makes sure the reputation follows.

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

#299

Post by sakabaro » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

Heliosmaster wrote: post #23

baldfat wrote: post #15

> ‘right to be forgotten’ I really think that hiding facts is a mistake. Yes someone made a bad mistake why is it their right to have it removed from the internet? Now if there are factually wrong then absolutely they should have the ability to have it removed. Things can legally be removed from a person's record like crimes committed by minors but if someone's life was impacted are we going to remove the victims' st…

A search engine != the internet. It should not be removed from the internet, but it should be removed from google. It's not the same thing as dealing with paper newspaper. One you have to go an explicitly look for the information and browse through them to get it (and still it can escape your gaze). With google you just need to type name and surname, and everything is at your fingertips.

Right to be forgotten go beyond search engines. It’s a very dangerous law.

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

#300

Post by visarga » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

redler wrote: post #88

baldfat wrote: post #15

> ‘right to be forgotten’ I really think that hiding facts is a mistake. Yes someone made a bad mistake why is it their right to have it removed from the internet? Now if there are factually wrong then absolutely they should have the ability to have it removed. Things can legally be removed from a person's record like crimes committed by minors but if someone's life was impacted are we going to remove the victims' st…

As someone else mentioned on this thread, there's little distinction in search engine results between something that happened yesterday and something that happened 20 years ago. We now have the phenomenon of information no longer "aging". We've always had "news" to tell us what's, well, new. But over time that information would age. It would become harder to recall, and take more work to retrieve. A story on the even…

"Old news" - what an oxymoron! I agree with you - the real answer is to change how we react to personal blunders, we all have our bad moments and now they are forever logged and accessible.