cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/4017115
Related material, not all as optimistic as the ABC news article:
The “right to be forgotten” should not be looked at as a good thing. Its reason for existing is honestly pretty gross. It’s about censoring people’s access to news if the subject of that news doesn’t like it. Literally, Google v Costeja is basically its origin, and it’s a case where Google was forced to stop linking to news articles about a person despite those articles being entirely accurate. This is bad for two reasons:
- First, the news is accurate. It reported on events that had occurred—in fact, the reporting was legally mandated by the Spanish Government. This was not in dispute. Access to accurate information simply because it portrays someone in a bad light is an awful kind of censorship.
- Second, it went after the wrong subject. Google’s job is to link people to websites. If someone wants information taken down, they shouldn’t be asking Google to de-index it, they should be going after the news site. If the law wants to allow the information to be made inaccessible, they should require the news site to take it down. Or better, they should be required to issue an update or retraction alongside the previously-accurate article.
If someone wants information taken down, they shouldn’t be asking Google to de-index it, they should be going after the news site.
How? How can you ask a site run in a foreign country, by people who don’t speak english, to remove some content about you?
Also - just because content is accurate doesn’t mean it’s legal. A video of two people having sex is “accurate”. That doesn’t mean it should be shared online if they haven’t consented to that.
As far as I know, Mario Costeja González never did anything wrong? All he did was sell an asset in order to pay off a debt. The media’s coverage of the event did long term harm to his reputation. I think it’s a perfectly good example of a reasonable takedown request. The normal rule for people with financial difficulties in Australia is to erase all records after five years (e.g. if you’re overdue paying off a loan, that black mark against your name will be forgotten if you do eventually pay the loan off and then don’t miss a payment for five years).
Kids also do stupid shit all the time, and these days those mistakes are often posted online. They shouldn’t ruin your reputation for your entire life.
I’m sure this won’t be a universal right. There will be rules around when someone can ask for content to be taken down. I’m reserving judgement until I’ve seen those rules… and even then it’s pretty normal for new legislation to miss a few things and be amended later.
I’m not going to address the ridiculous bad faith arguments made in your first two paragraphs.
As to the third, he didn’t do anything wrong per se, but he was required to sell off assets to pay debt. This is a simple fact which occurred and the news was required to report on it. If a law existed requiring the news organisation to take down those records after 5 years, that would be entirely reasonable. But that law did not exist in Spain, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper had been asked and refused to remove the news. It’s ridiculous to censor it via Google simply because he doesn’t like it. If there’s not a lawful basis to remove the article from its original source, there shouldn’t be a lawful basis to remove it from Google. (This is different to, say, removing pirate links from Google, because they are illegal and a lawful basis does exist for removing them, even if practical matters around jurisdiction prevent actually enforcing that law.)
There is never a case where a news site in a country should keep an article up, but search engines be required by the Government of the same country to de-index the article.
About time, it should be seen as a liability to hold personal data you have no need for
That’s already illegal. Australian Privacy Principle #3 states:
an organisation, may only collect this information where it is reasonably necessary for the organisation’s functions or activities
In other words, they can’t collect it unless it is necessary to provide service they offer.
I have lived and breathed (and trained hundreds of people on) these privacy principles. Our privacy laws are already pretty good. Waaaaay better than the USA. But yeah, they’re due for a bit of modernisation.
You can read the current privacy principles here.
Ads should be opt in. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to make them go the hell away.
The OP is talking about ad tracking. The comment I replied to suggested ads should be entirely removed.
With any number of alternative business models.
It’s unfuriating that people actually believe ads can have some kind of positive impact by creating a revenue stream for content.
And how many of those alternative business models:
- Ensure open access to content to anyone, rather than just those with enough disposable income?
- Enable support for content at a variety of different consumption patterns, including (a) niche but dedicated audience, (b) large moderately engaged audience, and © very large drive-by audience (i.e., audience of people who might not expect to access content from you ever again, but show up for this one particular popular thing)?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the option of other revenue streams. Paywalled content has the right to exist, and I pay for some of it myself very happily. So does donation-based content like Patreon and at least some Lemmy instances (including the one I’m on). But advertising works very well, and I have never seen someone suggest an alternative that could ever come close to replacing advertising in terms of the volume and variety of content that is currently available on the Internet.
I think everyone would be surprised how many people would opt in.
I installed a pihole and not being able to click on ads for 12 hours is the closest my wife has been to divorcing me.
Good to see Chaney introduce a private members bill to remove the carve out for political parties.
But the outcome of that seems like a fait accompli in any parliament where Labor and the Coalition can combine for a majority.
Cool, but our governments have passed some of the absolute worst privacy laws in the world so this means basically nothing.
Our ISPs are forced to log all the metadata about everything you do on your internet service, and the government can basically just request it for any reason they desire.
Federal law enforcement agencies can request app Devs put backdoors into their apps, so the cops can steal data. What’s more, the Devs aren’t allowed to tell anyone that they have done so.
