Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

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Your daughter is caught on camera shitting on a beach drunk when she was celebrating her 18th birthday.

Should the rest of her life now be ruined because it is 'is true and public information'. Can she never move on?

Seriously, imagine it. Put yourself in that scenario. Google will forever more show 'Girl squatting on beach' whenever anyone searches your name.

Before the age of computing she could simply move to another city and within a few years all would be forgotten.

What is so damaging about Google's search is that unlike humans, it never, ever forgets and it will never forget that the story was wildly popular and very relevant to your name.

And it's the same with crimes. When we punish someone for breaking the law, we send them to jail, punish them, and hopefully try and rehabilitate them. When they leave prision their punishment is spent, they have done their penance.

But not in Google's eyes. It will highlight the crime as the most relevant bit of information about this person in perpetua. It's mob justice meted out by a computer.

At some point people have to be allowed to move on with their lives, and Google is preventing that.

The only problem is, Google isn't the only way to find this information. It exists in social networks, on Twitter, Facebook, and even in Archive.org. It also exists in local search engines provided by the sites themselves.

If you have an uncommon name, and you were covered by the news media, or by social media, I can go direct to the AP, NYT, or Twitter search just as easily as Google.

It's sad that the internet can't forget, but the law can't make this a reality.

Does anyone seriously believe anyone doing serious research, stalking, or a background check on someone will be stymied by Google censoring links?

How many of you searching for pirated warez are stymied by DMCA takedowns and don't just go directly to Torrent search engines?

That's not a problem, the information isn't being removed, it's just being stopped from being the most visible representation of you, it's being de-emphasized.

Like in the old days everyone in the village knew Billy was caught with his pants down with a goat, but no-one brings it up every time they see him. Unlike "asshole" Uncle Google.

It's funny that this is said a lot that the internet can't forget... but the internet can and has forgotten a lot, so to speak... especially with regards to frequency/recent models in Google, Twitter, etc... a lot of stuff falls off relatively quickly... and it's actually hard to find some stuff that happened in the late 90's and early 00's, because you're trying to remember when concert X was, or who was the opening act...

There are plenty of times that the "internet forgets" which archive.org works to prevent, but it still happens.

The idea is that, if you search for it with determination, it becomes legally something completely different than if you stumble upon it "accidentally" while doing a "standard google search of the new job candidate"

In the EU we all know it is very hard to fire someone once they have been hired. Why won't employers start using background search services to find this information rather than Google?

See, it is illegal to reject or fire someone for this (mostly) – just because you, as a kid, partied hard, doesn’t mean employers can discriminate against you.

A lot of employers started testing the "anonymous job application": They only get a UUID, your qualifications and CV, and only after they decided if they want to hire you or not the employer actually gets the name, age, gender, etc.

VW, for example, is taking part in this. Also makes sure that no one can complain about ageism/sexism/racism/transphobia/otherkinphobia/etc

Mostly: There are cases where some types of background checks are legal.

This is an amazing practice. It's the double blind method applied to hiring!

Eh I say if people honestly can't learn to accept that things about other people from a significant time ago might no longer be relevant, then have SEO become a more personal service, and if people want to have their search results managed, because of whatever, they can manage it themselves or hire a professional, much like they would a lawyer, accountant, plumber, electrician, realtor, or agent. I mean they are having to hire lawyers presumably to get forgotten.

It won't be hard to bury a 6 year old photo of a random person shitting on the beach under all the new content.

Designing legislation from the victim's perspective is not advisable.

Example: How would you feel if someone assaulted someone you love? I would likely believe this person should be thrown in jail for a very long time although its probably an unreasonable punishment for the crime.

I just don't see a way where a piece of legislation can be drafted and implemented that would protect your daughter and not be abused by those in power who want to change the historical record.

Those in power who want to change the historical record already have the power to do so. They do not need this legislation to do what they want.

You do not have that power and this does not give you the power to change the historical record. It allows you to influence the bias in which Google, a biased search engine, displays information that should be relevant to your identity.

How is it abuse?

This is where we differ, criminals have a right to move on too from google shaming.

There will still be professional criminal record check companies and credit check companies, if you need to check someone out, don't rely on Google.

> Can she never move on?

Why should Google (or other search engines) bear the responsibility for covering up the mistakes of others?

Should libraries be forced to remove unflattering articles from their newspaper and magazine archives?

Because that's part of the cost of doing business in the EU where we have laws to protect individuals from companies.

No more, no less. It just is.

Or to put it in another way because you're highlighting the 'cost'. You want to make billions from the search business in the EU? Then you need a way to spend a few hundred thousand obeying the law.

Is it not obvious that you're going to get general-purpose search engines which explicitly do not operate in Europe that exist for the sole purpose of finding information that's been erased from Google under the 'Right to be Forgotten'?

In particular, search engines which prioritize/highlight information which has been erased making it easier to find things people wanted to keep hidden?

For background checks, I expect a whole cottage industry will spring up of extra-European companies which provide European employers with background information that's hidden on the continent.

It's not so much the ideal that the EC holds (that people have a right to be judged on their present rather than on an unaudited collection of searchable details from the past -- an ideal I can agree with), but that there seem to be a surprisingly large number of people who think the strategy they've adopted will actually be effective. It seems blindingly obvious to me (and I expect many other people who have been responding to you) that the inevitable outcome is going to be far far more effective at calling out things people would rather have forgotten than things as they stood before the ruling.

To me it seems as if a startlingly large group of people has said, effectively, "this ideal is so important that we must take drastic action that guarantees we can never achieve it".

So if a free search engine did this, then it'd be OK since it wasn't a for-profit company? Pretty sure that's broken logic.

Where did I say that?

If you're a small search engine, then it won't apply will it?

If you become a big search engine and you're free, it's another running cost just like servers, which you'll be paying for somehow.

If you run a free image hosting company you don't suddenly magically become immune from getting a knock on the door when you make no effort to remove kiddie porn?

That's why the logic isn't broken.

> If you're a small search engine, then it won't apply will it?

Why do you think it won't apply to a small search engine?

It applies to every search engine operating in the EU, independently of its size or status

Pretty obvious isn't it? If no-one knows about your search engine, they're not going to petition to have your results altered.

And even if you were asked and didn't, would the petitioner actually escalate it to being taken to court?

And on top of that, now we all know if you've got a search engine gathering data on EU soil you need to comply with EU law, you can build the functionality in from the beginning anyway. Which isn't prohibitively expensive.

I don't know why you're grasping at this 'cost' straw, search is fantastically profitable. The search engines now have a social responsibility the EU courts have given to them to comply with, which costs a little but of money. It's like crazy laws like 'no pollution' or 'have safety equipment'. This one's 'stop algorithmically persecuting individuals'.

> Pretty obvious isn't it? If no-one knows about your search engine, they're not going to petition to have your results altered.

You're a little confused, it is irrelevant if someone does a petition or not, every search engine has to comply the law and have the mechanisms available.

> I don't know why you're grasping at this 'cost' straw

When I have said anything about cost?

> And on top of that, now we all know if you've got a search engine gathering data on EU soil you need to comply with EU law

Really? Contradicting yourself?

> Because that's part of the cost of doing business in the EU where we have laws to protect individuals from companies.

This is not an answer to my question. Allow me to clarify:

What is the justification for the EU law requiring search engines to cover up the mistakes of others?

This explains a lot about Europe's shit-covered beaches.

Yes I feel like it's OK if someone is permanently shamed over shitting on a beach.

What the heck are you talking about?

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