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Google Releases Info On 2.4 Million 'Right To Be Forgotten' Requests (engadget.com)
According to Google's latest transparency report, the company has received 2.4 million "right to be forgotten" requests since 2014, most of which came from private individuals. Engadget reports: Europe's biggest court passed the right to be forgotten law in 2014, compelling the tech titan to remove personal info from its search engine upon request. In the report, Google has revealed that it complied with 43.3 percent of all the requests it's gotten and has also detailed the nature of those takedown pleas. France, Germany and the UK apparently generated 51 percent of all the URL delisting appeals. Overall, 89 percent of the takedown pleas came from private individuals: Non-government figures such as celebrities submitted 41,213 of the URLs in Google's pile, while politicians and government officials submitted 33,937. As Gizmodo noted, though, there's a small group of law firms and reputation management services submitting numerous pleas, suggesting the rise of reputation-fixing business in the region.
Out of those 2.4 million requests, 19.1 percent are directory URLs, while news websites and social networks only make up 17.6 and 11.6 percent of them. Majority of the URLs submitted for removal are random online destinations that don't fall under any of the previous categories. As for the takedown's reasons, it looks 18.1 percent of the submissions want their professional info scrubbed, 7.7 percent want info they previously posted online themselves to be removed and 6.1 percent want their crimes hidden from search.
Out of those 2.4 million requests, 19.1 percent are directory URLs, while news websites and social networks only make up 17.6 and 11.6 percent of them. Majority of the URLs submitted for removal are random online destinations that don't fall under any of the previous categories. As for the takedown's reasons, it looks 18.1 percent of the submissions want their professional info scrubbed, 7.7 percent want info they previously posted online themselves to be removed and 6.1 percent want their crimes hidden from search.
I wonder how much that list is worth.
Isn't the point of being forgotten that Google doesn't have info on them?
False analogy much?
Every end has half a stick.
Today they started screening out any results containing 'gun' in their shopping results. And I mean all. For a time, searching for 'Guns and roses' would turn up empty. They've "fixed" it at the time of this post.
The law says no. The right to be forgotten only allows for certain crimes to be hidden.
In European countries some lesser crimes get hidden from the record after you have paid your due to society. You don't have to tell employers, it doesn't appear on your credit report etc. And you can ask Google to remove it from searches for your personal details like name.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Is Google the only goddam search engine on the planet?
Why is it always, "Google, Google, Google?" Did Momma always like Google best?
Is Bing a thing?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So in your view, doxxing should be legal? Even if the person is just an innocent victim?
News flash. Life isn't fair. The person who gets misidentified as someone else they don't want to be associated with is not the only person in the world with problems. Shit happens to everyone, some of it deserved and some not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think instead of worrying about what other people think, one's time is better spent being the best person they can be wiith whatever life has given them
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Merriam Webster says:
Bing : Noun
A heap or pile
A heaping pile of WHAT is an open question.
I think I know how search engines work, basically.
Google is censoring the "hits," in search results when certain search terms are applied.
Google is not the custodian of the data and, therefore cannot delete the data at URL destinations.
Therefore, it is not true that "Google thinks, therefore the data is," or is not.
Even if Google does a surgical disconnect within its sphere and scope of influence, the data rests right where it was.
Am I missing anything?
I would suppose that, like the bots that capture deleted social media comments, someone could make money providing a searchable link database to the shit Google masks?
Thanks.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Then you need to read about the law in question.
First off, it doesn't "delete URLs". It only deletes associations with them.
So if there's a news article about you being arrested for possessing a baggie of pot 20 years ago, the right to be forgotten will let you prevent google from suggesting say "arrested" if someone typed "nerdflat" into Google. It would not prevent someone from seeing the result of "nerdflat arrest news" that shows the link (because that is factual data).
The law also demands that if it's a crime, the punishment has been paid - so if you were jailed and served your time and released, you can have Google remove that link after a reasonable period of time. News will not be deleted, so you can't delete the BBC or CNN or anyone else from reporting it, but you can prevent a casual Google of your name from showing it.
Also, some things cannot be forgotten, period.
You may ask why I detail things that happened way in the past - that's the entire point of the law. Imagine how hard it is getting a job if the first thing someone sees when they Google you is your 20 year old arrest. Not only is it entirely irrelevant, especially if you've done the time, but is something that old still relevant? Perhaps you were 16 when it happened? Is it fair that a criminal or arrest record check won't show it, but Google remembers?
That's where the right comes into play - otherwise, you're going to have a whole generation of young kids too stupid to know better fail the Google test despite having clean records, all because while the law expunges adolescent criminal history, Google and the Internet don't?
And if you think "society should forget only if they deem it OK", then let me ask you - is child pornography OK? If not, then if a teenaged couple sent nude photos of each other and get arrested, that should remain? And if those photos get sent to someone else (an offense known as distribution of child pornography), that person who was probably just innocently forwarding photos onwards to their teenaged friends now a sex predator for life? (And yes, technically, while the teen couple sending sexy photos should not be child pornography, the forwarding of said photos by third parties isn't as clear-cut).
That's why there's the law - because we all make mistakes, and once we've paid the due, and sufficient time has passed, we should be able to move on.
If you're in "for life", do you really care? Moreover, would it help you in any way?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do you deserve having your life ruined for making a mistake as a teenager?
Hell, your abortion laws say yes already, why am I asking?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe there should be a right to FORGET, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Depending on the sort of mistake it may not matter. Juvenile criminal records are sealed and names aren't released.
Here's what's wrong with the "right to be forgotten" law: "politicians and government officials submitted 33,937 [requests]". Politicians and government officials are the exact people whose pasts must remain a matter of permanent public record.
This actually happened to someone where I worked. She started, was getting on fine, but about a month in someone googled her name and found an old BBC article where she was interviewed about something illegal and embarrassing. Word spread quickly and in the end she quit.
At the time there was no right to be forgotten, but I hope she took advantage of it when it came in.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Some things in life have permanent consequences, even if they are only the result of a single poor decision that doesn't seem to justly merit such a consequence.
And if other people are willing to judge someone harshly because of something they did in the past because they found it on Google, even if it happened so long ago that doing so could reasonably be considered "unfair" to that person, then depriving those other people of the ability to learn about it so that it can't happen is doing, essentially, the same thing as what Newspeak from Orwell's 1984 was designed to do - trying to control what other people are allowed to think. That is why I am as opposed to the notion as I am.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The right to be forgotten does not surpass the right of free speech. Tens of millions died in Europe in living memory at the hands of regimes that relied heavily on censorhip. Well over a hundred million live under a dictator who censors and kills journalists. It is to be denied government at all costs.
The value of it, whatever it is, is secondary to mass death and loss of freedom.
Don't want to imagine, anymore, a boot stamping on a human face, forever? You have no assurance from history you have licked this problem once and for all, such that you can toy with it under democracy.
I await my downmod from the censorious who ain't censoring and hiding opinions they disagree with!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think, perhaps, you may have misread my comment.
I said "Life isn't fair".
Any notion of whether or not one "deserves" everything that happens to them is irrelevant.
Ultimately, the entire "Right to be Forgotten" concept tries to control what people are basically allowed to think about somebody by legally limiting access to past information about them. I find that puts the needs of the few ahead of the needs of the many, and it is why I consider it deplorable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Make sure you forget this guy, John Smith ... and this gal, Jane Doe ..."