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

#131

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #111

freeone3000 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing that the knowledge being public is somehow different from truth. I disagree with this - facts must be available. Google must be a source of information. Search engines are the interface to the web - removing information from a search engine is tantamount to erasing it from memory. The idea that people have the right to hide their pasts is a ridiculous assertion - it goes against freedom of speech, it g…

Counter-example: What if someone accused you of raping her/him and that news remains online close to your name because it's a typical scandal and heavily reported but, when it is proven that you didn't commit the crime, there is no news reporting it because it's not a clicky article? It happens frequently, not only with rape, but with any false accusation of a major crime... Typically there are a lot of articles abou…

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by oldcynic » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #85

oldcynic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem dangerous or journalistic at all here. In the UK at least the legal system is already aware and deals quite reasonably with the right to be forgotten. Has done for years. After a certain period a crime is considered spent and you can not be required to reveal it - except in some very limited circumstances. You'd have to reveal spent crimes if you want to join the police or become a magistrate for instanc…

>Doesn't seem that complex to achieve either. So what would be the problem then? Since you're familiar with it, I'm curious how the following situations are handled... There was a famous rape case involving a Stanford student. His name is Brock Turner. If you search directly on keywords "Brock Turner"[1], the first results will be his rape conviction. I think it's logical to assume the Right To Be Forgotten wants the…

Well in the UK it would be based on sentence. I'm not sure of the usual severity of sentence for rape, but imprisonment is quite common and I think of a length to often never be spent. I think many would consider it a serious enough offence that you can't simply "move on" from it. Rape and murder probably should not be forgotten, bar room brawls at 19 probably should. The laws seem to try and have some awareness of that nuance.

A sentence of over 4 years prison, including suspended, would never be spent. Prison for six months would be considered spent after 2 years. However, sex offences are an exception covered by the sex offence register, which gives a different time line. 10 years or life I think, again depending on severity of sentence.

Thus he'd not be rehabilitated and forgotten by UK law until 2025 I think, so should not really be getting the right to be forgotten - it's too current.

The rehabilitation law itself covers insurance, employment, housing, media and so forth and has no awareness of any new media as it's from long before them. So it would solve the indirection via obfuscation: An old, spent, offence would be buried in some newspaper and court archives and probably only surface if someone was dedicated to digging into their background.

The EU right to be forgotten seems like a valiant, if perhaps a little clumsy, attempt to achieve a similar effect.

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

#133

Post by drivingmenuts » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

jbigelow76 wrote: post #22

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…

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 is not the only source of information, but it is A source of information. Why should Google not be permitted to index public sources of information?

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

#134

Post by Rescis » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

snoman wrote: post #84

lightbyte wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> In my opinion the real solution here is to be more understanding to stupid things people have done in the past. If you think the real solution is to change the way the world thinks about, and judges, everyone else then you're being remarkably naive.

> If you think the real solution is to change the way the world thinks about, and judges, everyone else then you're being remarkably naive.

This isn't a response, it's an insult. Two well educated, equally experienced people can come two two seperate conclusions, without one being "naive". Try and argue always assuming that the person your taking to is equally intelligent as you.

Regardless, treating the symptom (Search engines displaying old news stories) of the problem (people judging others irrationally), without treating the problem itself will only cause equally bad, if not worse, issues to pop up elsewhere. The vast majority of times a state censors information, it ends up being harmful far past what was initially intended (the red scare/McCarthyism, DMCA, FOSTA, SOPA/PIPA, etc).

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

#135

Post by nlowell » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:19 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.

They're not mutually exclusive. And anyways, given the option of improving a tool/legislation vs improving the nature of human judgement, I will always take the former.

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

#136

Post by lolcatnip » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

jbigelow76 wrote: post #22

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…

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…

The "right to be forgotten" applies to all search engines, and possibly other types of business as well. Google just happens to be the first company to get into trouble about it.

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

#137

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #49

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…

The post above shows a complete misunderstanding of the issue. "Right to be forgotten" laws apply as much to other sources of information as they do to Google. The discussion has become a bad version of "telephone", people responding to quotes in the parent rather than knowing anything about the issue in question. The question of whether one uses Google or other sources is irrelevant here. Sure, journalists could go…

No they don't. They explicitly don't apply to journalism. That's the entire point of this. Right to be forgotten laws don't allow you to censor the intercept (a publication), but do allow you to force aggregators to remove the publication.

That's why people try to get things delisted from Google, because they can't get the original publisher to remove them.

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

#138

Post by drivingmenuts » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

bussierem wrote: post #68

lightbyte wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

By that same token, it's much easier to discover who the real idiots, bigots, assholes, etc. are, and then to apply appropriate social sanctions. It may suck for some people, but if we keep these people visible, then eventually maybe there will be fewer of them.

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

#139

Post by l9k » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #82

Sharlin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is internet makes everything look like it happened yesterday. Traditional news is, well, news, but Google doesn’t really distinguish between yesterday and 20 years ago. Some 90s articles and pages are still perfectly relevant and should be on the first page of search results, others very much not so.

It does, though. The problem is that the most generally notable thing about a boring person who committed a serious crime 20 years ago is in fact the serious crime that they committed 20 years ago. Put another way, if I put the name of my new neighbor into Google, the resulting webpage I would in fact most want to see as the result would definitely be the article on the murder they committed 20 years ago, even though…

Most people didn't commit murder 20 years ago but may have had a car accident or organized a loud party with weed while in college.

People change and your neighbor now has a family and lives quietly. It seems unfair the world should know him about his past mistakes

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

#140

Post by aaomidi » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

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…

You know what I find amazing in this entire debate?

We provide protections for literal objects in the form of DMCA and other various copyright systems. We provide legal enforcement for the right for these copyrighted systems to be forgotten on search engines. We threaten the rulebreakers with massive fines and prison time.

But when it comes to REAL people. People who can have their lives completely changed with wrong/very negative information about them being accessible everywhere we do nothing.

It's just fascinating.