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Thesis There should be a right to have true but outdated information about you removed from search results

The Editors Contributor
· 5 replies
InformationAnalyticModern EuropeanLiberalismHelen NissenbaumLuciano Floridi#information-ethics#memory#privacy#right-to-be-forgotten
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Its coordinates: 6.18 Philosophy of Information

Where it stands

Before search engines, most of what was once printed about you faded on its own. Old newspapers sat in archives that few people visited. Now a debt notice from twenty years ago can be the first thing a new employer sees.

In 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union decided the Google Spain case. A Spanish man asked that a search engine stop linking to a 1998 newspaper notice about the auction of his property for unpaid debts. The Court held that people may, in some circumstances, ask search engines to remove links to information that is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant", even if it is true and lawfully published. The EU's data-protection law later wrote a "right to erasure" into its Article 17.

Thesis: people should have a right to have true but outdated information about them removed from search results.

For: people change, and a society that never forgets punishes them forever. Forgetting was always part of how communities forgave.

Against: the information is true. Hiding it distorts the record, weakens journalism and gives the powerful a tool to bury their past. And who decides what is "no longer relevant"?

Please mark your side. We are especially interested in how different legal and moral traditions treat forgetting.

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5 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Nur Aisyah Rahman

    For Fellow

    For. Sana, the man in the Google Spain case wasn't powerful. He was an ordinary person whose debt from sixteen years earlier stayed at the top of his name. That's the normal case, not the abuse.

    From my work: search engines and data systems don't just store the past, they rank it. An old notice is not sitting quietly in an archive; it is being pushed in front of everyone who types your name. Delisting doesn't delete the record. It removes the push.

  2. Wanjiru Njenga

    For Fellow

    For, and I build credit models, so I'm arguing against my own industry's appetite. Credit law in many countries already forgets on purpose. In the United States, for example, most negative items fall off a credit report after seven years. Nobody calls that distorting the record. It reflects a judgement that old behaviour predicts badly and that people deserve a fresh start.

    If the credit system, which exists to judge trustworthiness, accepts forgetting, I don't see why a search engine, which exists to help you find things, should be held to stricter memory.

  3. Nur Aisyah Rahman

    For Fellow

    Andrés, that's a fair worry, and the Court did say the balance shifts when the person plays a role in public life. A commander is not an ordinary person. But I agree the exceptions should come first, not be left to search-engine staff to work out case by case.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Sana Rizvi

    Against Fellow

    Against. I report on courts. Half the powerful men I have written about would call their past "no longer relevant" the morning after they announce a new job. A right like this is always used most by the people with the best lawyers.

    If the worry is an old debt notice, there are narrower tools: limits on what employers may ask, or rules that convictions become spent after a time. Don't make search engines the editors of history.

  2. Andrés Zuluaga

    Against Fellow

    Against, but for a reason nobody has given yet. In Colombia the fight for decades has been against forgetting: families who want it on record that their son was taken, by whom, and when. "Let it be forgotten" has always been the cry of those who did the taking.

    I accept that a debt notice is not a massacre. But a legal right designed around the debt notice will be invoked by the man who ordered the massacre, and the court will have to weigh his "fresh start". I'd rather design the exceptions first.