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Comment by kjjw | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to think that it is in Google's interest to create a clumsy system that does not properly check requested deletions. Too many deletions that have no merit under the scheme will likely create a backlash, placing a negative highlight on the scheme to the average person on the street who will now start to read news article after news article about erroneous deletions.

What the EU is trying to do is likely impossible. But I can't help but think that their intentions are sound. For example, I fully expect a modern society to give a second chance to a difficult teenager that receives a criminal record. Many governments would hide such a record after a certain time.

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> For example, I fully expect a modern society to give a second chance to a difficult teenager that receives a criminal record. Many governments would hide such a record after a certain time.

There seems to be a simpler way to accomplish this than the current EU approach: a name change. It seems much easier to have an individual change his or her identity than to have the whole of society collectively agree to not associate a name with some act. You might still need some law to prohibit linking old identities with new ones, but this is vastly more workable than asking third parties to decide if something is "inadequate or irrelevant". It's also less likely to be abused -- e.g. a politician can't censor a prior criminal act while simultaneously getting the benefits of name recognition.

Moreover, since a name change typically requires some sort of administrative petition, it provides an opportunity for judicial oversight. You could make it work like bankruptcy -- you petition the court for a name change, and a judge would decide what aspects of your old identity carrier over to your new one.

A name change is not simple, particularly if you are a bit further along in life.

That's the point. If there is something so terrible that you feel the need to hide truthful information on the Internet, then the process shouldn't be simple.

You can't just change your name everywhere.

Why not? People change their names all the time (e.g. for marriage or religious reasons), so there's existing precedence for this. During the name change process, you get a certificate of name change, so that helps with issues with bank account names, contracts, etc. Your friends and family may still refer to you by your old name, but that's generally not an issue from a "right to forget" standpoint. The only difference would be that the government would seal any records regarding your name change.

Changing your name is, at any rate, easier than making other people forget what you did last summer.

In the US that might be the case, that doesn't make it so in other countries.

In Germany the scenarios in which you are allowed to change your name are all defined by law. While you are allowed to change your name for resocialization or as a protection against harassment, you can get search results removed for reasons that wouldn't allow a name change.

Furthermore changing your name takes quite a bit of effort, asking a search engine to remove search results is a much simpler process.

To be clear, my original post was normative. As a policy, the law should favor name changes over a right to demand Google remove a search listing.

> Furthermore changing your name takes quite a bit of effort, asking a search engine to remove search results is a much simpler process.

Simpler for you, but not for the search engine! Or for society as a whole. More to the point, it should not be easy to erase your name from the Internet. The right to be forgotten is easily abused, and it should be invoked as a last resort not the first.

> For example, I fully expect a modern society to give a second chance to a difficult teenager that receives a criminal record.

They could do that by avoiding judgment on a teenager with a critical record rather than not pretending like that record doesn't exist. And if the problem is that too many people are judging, then it's not true that society at large really does feel the same way about it.

Give people facts, not judgments about the facts.

Can't upvote this enough. I see that EU (and in wider sense, many private advocates wrt. discussions about Facebook, et al.) wants to go the way of denying and removing facts, which is both hurtful for the society and not going to work anyway.

The real problem are not teenager's criminal record or photos from drunk partying - the problem are the people who judge others by things like that, many of which are done by everyone else anyway. And if this is the majority of people, maybe we should finally admit that this is a society-wide problem.

The reality is that someone who has 50 applications on his table and wants to invite 5-10 for an interview for 1 position is looking for easy ways to narrow them down.

And over time society will recognise that prejudging applicants based on irrelevant crap unearthed on the Internet isn't the best business strategy, so the original problem diminishes.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! <sniff> Oh, you kill me ... I needed a good laugh.

Reality check. Look at the prevalence of tattoos. Think that the prejudice against that has diminished? As far as I can tell, it's gotten worse.

Before, tattoos were sufficiently rare that if somebody had one who was applying for a job where they were unusual, they generally were given the benefit of the doubt (ex-serviceman, gang member who got out, etc.).

Now, they're so common that they're used as a proxy for "lower socioeconomic status" and all the discrimination that comes with that.

Re: tattoos - maybe that's only a US thing. Visit any finance tower in Melbourne Docklands on casual Fridays and you will see plenty of the early 20s male staff with full sleeve tattoos on display. And I'd guess around 10% of the female staff have small neck or wrist tatts. Ten years ago that would have been completely verboten.

Yes sadly very common in the US. Many employee dress codes require "no visible tattoos", when unfairly penalizes excesses of youth, cultural differences, and people of lower socioeconomic status, who are unlikely to have funds available for tattoo removal.

This should be the top comment!

How does this request not have merit? What makes it "clumsy"? Because the linked author says it is?

Recall that the original action that yielded the right to be forgotten clause was a gentleman who wanted a debt confiscation and sale removed from the public record. The actual national agency told him to get lost -- the data was valid and unchallenged, and is a part of the recognized past, and is fully available and robust if you search them -- but the European Court decided that search engines must, for some reason, erase this past.

Merrill Lynch was absorbed into Bank of America: It no longer exists as an organization. This gentleman has moved on and no longer serves as Chairman or CEO, effectively retired and sitting on apparently a single board.

Is a newspaper article slandering him really relevant (the pertinent demand of the court ruling) to anyone anymore?

Why, if the search engines have to pretend that a man didn't really have property confiscated and sold for debts, do they not have to also pretend that he wasn't a CEO?

Note that European courts really like giving out big fines (especially, it seems, to American companies), so this impossible to judge subjective basis by which items must be deleted is a no-win situation for Google, and of course they must lean to the side of erring to delete. Erring to retain is a legal quagmire.

I didn't say this case is or isn't 'clumsy', nor that it is or isn't 'meritful'.

But I believe the incentive as I stated it exists, regardless of the specifics of this case.

The incentive Google has is to not get sued for contravening a lawful order of the European Court. I don't see what conspiratorial wagering adds (the implied notions of your first post were obvious to all).

And be sure that every person with the means is going to exploit this immediately to expunge anything negative in their past. Google is in a position of being unable to decide what the European Court, or any other court, might decide is "relevant" (perhaps the court will be willing to offer its services to judge this), so the end result is obvious, no conspiracy needed.

I get what you're saying but given that there has yet to be a fine issued under this scheme what you are describing is also wagering. I am doubtful about any commercial entity's good intentions when it comes to an opportunity to exploit a system to their benefit.

> Is a newspaper article slandering him

It's not slander if it's true.

It doesn't make any business sense to do it any other way. Checking if requests are valid costs money. Following requests blindly costs almost nothing, just a single internet page is lost out of millions. Google makes money off the long tail of advertising, a huge amount that flies under the radar of personal wine and dine deals. They know very well they can't afford to check every request personally.

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