
Why has Google cast me into oblivion? - graeme
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28130581
======
natosaichek
I like that they told the author that his article would no longer be viewable.

If that's the case, and the 'removal' is not secret, then they could (should?)
totally make available a separate database of articles that people have asked
to be removed.

Basically, the original article may be old (or theoretically irrelevant) but
the fact that someone asked for it to be removed is very new and not at all
irrelevant. It would be awesome to see this as the Streisand effect writ large
- everything that people want to see buried actually gets a new surge of
attention.

~~~
magicalist
The Guardian reported[1] that they were at least considering a notice at the
bottom of a search result page that had a result removed, like they do with
DMCA requests.

If that's the case, hopefully they can do what they do with DMCA notices, and
link to a copy of the actual takedown request (which would include a link or
links to what was taken down). ChillingEffects.org could start a new section
for right to be forgotten requests.

On the other hand, reprinting DMCA takedown notices is protected by the First
Amendment in the US, but reprinting right to be forgotten requests may be
frowned upon by EU courts.

Edit: according the newer Guardian piece that thegregjones posted above, there
is a warning[2], but just a "Learn more" link, no link to the actual removal
request.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/08/google-
sea...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/08/google-search-
results-indicate-right-to-be-forgotten-censorship)

[2]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrYpLOwIgAE8pF0.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrYpLOwIgAE8pF0.jpg)

~~~
fpgeek
Google considered a DMCA-like notice. The court found this to be an attempt to
circumvent the ruling, since it would make it too easy to find removed
material. Instead, they settled on a notice for any search that might have
been affected (essentially any search for a name), whether or not results have
been removed:

[http://searchengineland.com/right-to-be-forgotten-
notices-19...](http://searchengineland.com/right-to-be-forgotten-
notices-195542)

------
auxbuss
There's a possible darker side to this, of course.

Today, the following story -- regarding an ex-member of the British Cabinet
and a paedophile network -- started gaining a lot of traction in the UK,
mainly because there are an increasing number of Members of Parliament (MPs)
demanding an inquiry[0]:

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/02/lord-
brittan...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/02/lord-
brittan-1980s-dossier-sex-abuse-claims)

The story itself has been around for decades.

Coincidentally, Google have begun removing articles relating to the story[1]
-- for example, the search "Leon Brittan PIE" will return -- at the bottom of
the page:

"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1
result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at
ChillingEffects.org."

Currently, for this notice, chillingeffects.org returns[2]:

"Notice Unavailable: The cease-and-desist or legal threat you requested is not
yet available. Chilling Effects will post the notice after we process it."

Coincidence or not, it's a troubling how easily this mechanism can be abused.

[0] [http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5282/pressure-builds-in-
pa...](http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5282/pressure-builds-in-parliament-
to-address-child-sex-abuse-in-uk)

[1] [http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/google-searches-
for...](http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/google-searches-for-leon-
brittan-and-pie-censored-after-cease-and-desist-notice/)

[2]
[http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=1719125](http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=1719125)

------
lotharbot
This is a great example of the Streisand effect [0] -- trying to hide
something draws attention to it.

Specifically, I now know about Stan O'Neal, who "was forced out of Merrill
[Lynch] after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless
investments it had made." Google may no longer be showing the original result,
but now I see the reason for the original article _and_ the fact that he
wanted it hidden.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

~~~
keithpeter
A Google UK search on Stan O'Neal from within the UK yields the wikipedia
page, then at #2 a _Salon_ article explaining how Google has given notice to
Mr Peston that the original BBC article may be de-indexed. The next half dozen
links are pretty critical of Mr O'Neal as well.

Oddly, this new BBC page is not apparent in the index (yet).

~~~
keithpeter
As of 1921 BST on 2014 July 3rd, the BBC article in question is now second
link when searching for Stan O'Neal.

So you can ask for a page to be de-linked but if you are in the public eye and
the de-linking gets noticed, the results may not be what you expected.

------
thegregjones
James Ball at the Guardian has written about some of their articles that have
been disappeared: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/eu-
righ...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/eu-right-to-be-
forgotten-guardian-google)

~~~
magicalist
This is really good and should be the top article, not the rather silly BBC
piece.

Speaking of the Streisand effect, if you search for "Dougie McDonald Guardian"
on google.co.uk as it suggests, the offending links are gone, but now all the
top links are to stories _about_ the offending links.

------
HNJohnC
Someone needs to make a search engine that _only_ returns results for things
that people have tried to hide under this law.

~~~
B-Con
Or just make it hard to find all the instances. For example, this article
itself references the content in the article that was removed from search
results. The effectiveness of having the original link removed is probably
very minimal unless this page is also removed.

Ultimately, it's a race. The "hider" has to find all the things they want
hidden and explicitly list them. As long as the content spreads faster than it
is banned, the banning is negated.

~~~
tokenizerrr
It's just weird that the search engine is tasked with the removal. If other
sites can legally link to the "forgotten" content - which appears to still be
online - then why can't a search engine link to it? If they want this ruling
to make sense at all, the removal requests should go directly to the entity
hosting the content in my opinion.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Since the impact of such an implementation would be greater, it would be
harder to pass a law requiring it. This is a more gentle way to censor public
debate, while allowing more specialized "research" search engines to continue
providing the information to those who could not accept to have it denied.

Not to mention how much easier it is to send all requests to a handful of
major search providers rather than having to determine who hosts what and
hoping they know how to properly deal with such a request.

------
outside1234
Here's how this is going to do down:

Google is going to slowly be asked to forget all of Europe, including the
holocaust (since this is a stain on the families involved).

This will cause a backlash against "erasing European history"

And then they will repeal this.

All through this, Google will be the villain, not the ding-dongs running the
EU.

~~~
valas
FWIW, in some EU countries holocaust denial is a crime.

~~~
thisjepisje
But not speaking about the holocaust isn't.

------
gadders
The EU really is a joke.

I think if people want to hide stuff like revenge porn, or obvious slander,
then fair enough. But unindexing legitimate journalism is stupid.

~~~
josephlord
I think there are games being played here. The European Court ruled that some
things should be made harder to find (revenge porn, obvious slander, spent
convictions etc.).

Google don't want to do this and are trying to make a mockery of the ruling
removing from the results anything that they are asked to as long as it is
about a person with the very aim of stirring a backlash against the ruling.
Requests to take down important stories from major news organisations are the
perfect way to do this provided that they keep the blame on the EU not on
their implementation.

I haven't read the ruling but I'm pretty sure that there is some leeway for
judgement and for Google to have a process to decide on these cases rather
than having to comply with every single request.

I would need to understand the ruling better to come down with a full view
about whether it is right or not. On the one hand Google's results can cause a
lot of damage and they should carry some responsibility for them on the other
legitimate stories of real public interest and information about serious
wrongdoing shouldn't be censored.

~~~
ewillbefull
> On the one hand Google's results can cause a lot of damage

Public, factual information causes damage and Google is responsible because
somebody else reported on it and they indexed it? And so Google should stop
linking to the article which will still exist and can be found on other search
engines in other jurisdictions without any effort? And we can pretend online
censorship works all of a sudden now that the EU found a "good" excuse for it?

> The European Court ruled that some things should be made harder to find
> (revenge porn, obvious slander, spent convictions etc.).

So what does freedom of expression mean to you, then? A regulated, controlled
public discourse with arbitrary rules about what the government thinks is
relevant or important for people to know or read about? And it looks like you
slipped "spent convictions" in there, which throws off the argument.

I think you already made your mind up.

~~~
Dylan16807
I wouldn't classify automatically generated results as expression.

~~~
ewillbefull
So it's not a harm to freedom of expression if we allow your blog to exist,
but we censor links to it because they're "automated"? It doesn't matter if
it's automated or highly moderated. It's an expression and censoring anything
like it influences the public discourse in some way.

------
brownbat
Should Google try to interpret the ruling as closely as possible, only
blocking the most clearly irrelevant information, and honoring requests for
appeals from journalists whenever possible? That would limit damage to those
seeking information, but risk another turn at the courts.

Or should they just implement it as broadly and bluntly as possible, lowering
their risk of noncompliance, reducing their costs of evaluating each case,
while increasing the chance that people will start to grasp the negative
consequences they argued about to the court?

Despite the near term harms, if we're worried more about the long run, there's
a case to be made for the latter...

~~~
vbuterin
There should be a name for deliberately making a big fuss of following every
regulation as expansively as possible to prove a point; inverse civil
disobedience, civil obedience maybe?

~~~
shakethemonkey
There is, it's called "work-to-rule."

~~~
arg01
Somewhat ironically some countries have laws that make work-to-rule (usually
phrased in law as malicious compliance) as illegal.

------
j2kun
> Google must delete "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" data from
> its results when a member of the public requests it.

Could Google legally get around this ruling by claiming that recent deletion
requests inherently make the data in question relevant? Since the right to be
forgotten is important news, the stories about people requesting the deletion
of their data (and what kinds of data are being deleted) is very relevant.
It's the equivalent of the "every number is interesting" paradox.

Edit: proper quote from the ruling is actually "inaccurate, inadequate,
irrelevant or excessive"

~~~
spinlock
The problem is your dealing with a court who decided that the _search result_
should be deleted and not the web page that is "inaccurate, inadequate,
irrelevant or excessive". I would not bother arguing logically with them.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if Google is making a statement here about the ruling. They've been
really vocal about how they are taking away "useful" (certainly in the sense
of background checks) information that is in places people don't expect to be
censored (like newspapers).

This will lead people to point out that they can go to the city library and
look at the back issue of the newspaper and it won't be censored there. And
that will lead to the question of what is, and what is not, the public record
and what sort of damage to that record is tolerated in the interest of
justice.

------
Justsignedup
Nobody has attacked the elephant in the room.

If an article was written about me committing murder, and I want that
"forgotten", then I will request google to take the info down in the EU.
Great. A background checking company goes to "www.google.com" and finds that
article. They don't give a shit that they are in France and should abide by
the french blocks, or they'll use a proxy. That's the point, this is
completely stupid and prevents a common untrained person from accessing the
information, but does nothing for background checks and the like.

------
drakaal
I do this "for a living". Reputation Management is when you pay someone like
me to make that result fall to the 5th page of Google so people searching for
you only see the happy fun stuff you have done.

What is missing from the implementation from Google, that Google really needs
to be "fair" is an OPT OUT.

You see when I go in and fix a reputation by outranking bad stuff with good,
the bad stuff is still there if you know what you are looking for.

BBC JOHN DOE KILLS BABYSITTER is not going away, just not showing up when you
Google JOHN DOE BABYSITTER because I will have place the top 40 results with
things about How awesome SUSAN THE 16 YEAR OLD is who is now JOHN DOE's
babysitter.

If Google did an OPT OUT, you would be able to say, "I am John Doe of
Hicksville, IN" here is my picture, remove me from the interwebs. And nothing
about you would be there. No good, No Bad.

Is this just me having sour grapes that my business of shaping reality is
going away? No. If anything this is good for business. People will want what
the EU has and flock to me.

For those who think I am a bad person. Yeah, I know that
[http://www.blackwaterops.com](http://www.blackwaterops.com) didn't pick its
name because we thought we were the good guys.

But at the same time a lot of what we do is good. We work with organizations
that share the name with bad people. You know how hard it is when you share
the name with a serial killer to get a job even after that serial killer was
executed?

You know how hard it is to recover from stuff 20+ years after the the Jack in
the Box ecoli outbreak?

Or being named Play Boy's Hottest X and then trying to get a job working with
kids? Even if you didn't ask to be associated with Play Boy?

------
jstalin
Down the memory hole goes everything in the EU. I'm thankful every day for the
First Amendment in the US.

------
blisterpeanuts
I don't understand; did they single out Google, or does the ruling also apply
to Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Apple, Facebook, and many other companies that
cache results?

Search engines may cache information, but the content usually originates on
some other hosting site. Those hundreds of thousands of hosting sites may
still have the content, so what the Court is saying is all the more silly--you
must disallow search results if anyone in the world opts out.

I say, Google should just go about its business and if EC doesn't like it,
Google should pull out of Europe and just allow anyone to access it from
overseas servers. It will be just like China, which blocks Google.

Information wants to be free. This is a huge step backward.

~~~
grrowl
If they adopt an attitude like that, they'll run out of countries to remove
themselves from in not long.

------
rsiqueira
I also received (yesterday) this same message from Google: Subject: [Webmaster
Tools] Notice of removal from Google Search

 _" We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following
pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions
of Google: [one url with a post in my site] For more information, see
www.google .com/policies/faq/?hl=en _

The post in my site that was blocked by Google had only some catalog
information about a car dealer in Netherlands and I could not understand why
it was removed by Google search.

~~~
fortuitous
_chomps on popcorn_

This can only get better.

------
fpgeek
Clearly this person should sue Google on the grounds that all of the time,
effort and energy they put into their blog entry means that it has a "right to
be remembered". Or, at the very least, they have a right to a specific
explanation about why it is being blocked, so they can challenge it properly
(ultimately in court, if necessary).

------
webhat
I'm seeing a catch-22: by writing and posting this article this article made
the other article relevant. And Stan O'Neal, if he requested it deleted, is
relevant again - albeit in a context of filing a removal notice.

------
martco
Wait, so Google hasn't actually done anything to the article?

"Although the BBC has had the notice from Google that my article will not show
up in some searches, it doesn't appear to have implemented this yet."

------
fmax30
Relevant :
[http://www.google.co.uk/policies/faq/](http://www.google.co.uk/policies/faq/)

------
RexRollman
What I want to know is, if you are searching from outside the EU, is the info
also censored? Or does it affect everyone?

------
exbbc
Indeed it is clumsy because the media is exempt of this ruling.

Which makes me suspect this was an easy way of drawing some media attention,
and spreading misinformation.

~~~
magicalist
The media is exempt from having to censor their own stories, but search
engines are not exempt from removing links to media stories.

The whole ruling was _about_ forcing google to remove links to news stories
about Costeja González.

~~~
exbbc
No it wasn't about news stories from legitimate news organisations. This is
all misinterpreted by people not knowing the facts nor the law, but lets
ignore that and jump on the outrage bandwagon.

------
personZ
_To be fair to Google, it opposed the European court ruling. But its
implementation of it looks odd, perhaps clumsy._

I find it incredible that Google is held at fault in this case because they
don't choose whether it is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" in a
way that fits the author's view. Such an analysis is so absurdly subjective,
and it is impossible for Google to satisfy both sides.

The European Court ruling is pure absurdity, and this article could more
accurately be titled "European Court Rules That Past Must Be Wiped. Much
Comedy As Result."

There is no possible way that Google can implement it that won't endlessly
earn them criticism, such as this piece.

~~~
cwyers
Unless Google wants to treat the EU like they did China and redirect all
searches to a jurisdiction with actual press freedoms, they're doing all they
can here.

~~~
ulfw
"a jurisdiction with actual press freedoms"

And where would that be?

~~~
andrewfong
So long as you're not reporting on matters of "national security", the U.S.
actually has a decent track record with that ...

~~~
lisper
Yes, but the problem is that what is a "matter of national security" in
practice is whatever the government says it is. So this exception is enough to
effectively eviscerate the freedom of the press.

~~~
ewillbefull
Nobody got in trouble in the U.S. for reporting on/distributing the Snowden
leaks. There weren't any newspaper raids. Nobody was asked to "keep quiet".
Anyone who did censor did so out of mutual interest.

Press freedoms have not been eviscerated here. It's a trendy narrative, but in
reality you have enormous freedom to distribute content which was illegally
obtained as per the Pentagon Papers cases and others. The worst thing we have
here is cozy relationships between the media and the government, but
alternative news sources are available everywhere and Americans are relying on
them more than ever.

~~~
lisper
> Nobody was asked to "keep quiet"

Given the existence of NSL's
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter))
there is no way of knowing who has been "asked" to keep quiet.

And when Glenn Greenwald visited the U.S. recently it was far from clear that
he would not be taken into custody.

~~~
magicalist
Just to be clear, NSLs are largely unregulated by the judiciary and are
frequently overbroad in the information they demand, but they aren't arbitrary
gag orders.

They can keep you silent about the fact that you got an NSL (and that
therefore there's an investigation going on), but not about the content
itself.

------
CodeMage
I'm sorry if I'm being naive, but can someone explain to me why everyone
blames EU for this? I mean, the motivation behind the ruling seems to be a
very good one. So what am I missing?

~~~
rguldener
It is very hard to define exactly what "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer
relevant" means and if Google refuses to delete an entry upon request the
person asking for the deletion can sue them if they disagree with Google
(which they probably would since they asked for the deletion in the first
place).

This could potentially result in thousands of expensive cases for Google which
means they will probably just follow through with most of the deletion
requests. This in turn means that many fear cases like this, where somebody
could be trying to clean up their past, getting rid of entries that display
them in a negative light, if justified or not.

At its core the idea of the law is probably desirable but the current wording
and its subsequent implementation mean that is a powerful weapon for everybody
trying to clean their past from the web.

~~~
gress
Google has a definition of what is relevant. It's not hard to come up with
one. What is hard is to get people to agree. Right now Google controls the
definition, but given it's monopoly status in Europe, it is not surprising
that The EU is starting to work on this.

------
walshemj
All google has to do is buy an European news paper and become a traditional
publisher - they could buy the independent cheaply.

