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

#331

Post by bvinc » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

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…

We as a society have decided to keep public records. I don't see anyone advocating that we clean everyone's record after they repay their debt to society. We still have background checking services and they don't have to enforce a right to be forgotten. I assume county record searches don't have to enforce a right to be forgotten. I also assume a specifically focuses criminal record website doesn't have to enforce a right to he forgotten. It seems a little weird to enforce it on Google under some pretence that he should have a clean record after repaying his debts to society.

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

#332

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #162

kelnos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The issue is that Google claims to be a "journalist" when it thinks it prevents them from having to do what they don't want to do (delist things), and then claims to be "just a platform" when it thinks it prevents them from having to do what they don't want to do (take responsibility for content on their platforms). Google wants it both ways, in whichever way is momentarily convenient. Almost everyone's comments on R…

I don't really see a problem with that concept in a general sense. Google should absolutely use the law to its advantage wherever it can. We as citizens (who presumably are able to influence our elected representatives) need to close loopholes in those laws when Google uses them to do things we don't like.

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

#333

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

gethesmane wrote: post #93

kelnos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It sounds like you see no problem with selectively manipulating the English language to drum up support for legal outcomes "absolutely want" to happen, then.

It's not manipulating the English language, though. It's merely interpreting the law in a way that's favorable to someone's particular interest. As I said, no one would seriously start calling Google a "journalist" in colloquial usage. Calling them a "journalist" in a legal sense is an entirely different thing, and legal definitions of things are already often unintuitive from a "pure English" sense.

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

#334

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #76

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?

Do you need to know about their parking tickets or embezzlement, though? Or that time they partied too hard 25 years ago? Outside of specific circumstances, having every mistake you've ever made accessible at a glance is not really good for society.

Um... yes? I'd probably want to know that information. And I'd also know that partying too hard 25 years ago probably doesn't have any bearing on their current behavior. But if they had been to jail for embezzling money? Yeah, I might have a problem with that.

Just give me the information, and let me decide how to interpret it.

The Right To Be Forgotten not only denies me the information in the first place, but it allows someone to selectively curate the information out there about them to tell the story they want to tell about themselves. Sure, maybe partying too hard 25 years ago isn't relevant anymore, but being convicted of child abuse 10 years ago certainly is. If it's just as easy to erase references to the latter as it is for the former, that's a problem. And what perfectly objective and moral party should decide what bits of info are ok to delist, and what should remain? I don't think any of us would trust that such an entity exists.