One of the most exciting archeological pieces we have from the Roman empire, is graffiti spouting the same mundane things people scrawl on bathroom walls today.
> At best, the users should have been given the chance to download whatever they want for private use, and the rest should rightly get obliterated.
This is a hard one. The right to be forgotten is probably something the average person should have.
But equally, human history can be understood and shaped by some of the most mundane things, and our descendants have a right to review that. To understand it.
I don't have a solution to it.
> Many people would object less to Facebook if it probably deleted all content not marked "important" after a year, rather than creepily storing everything ever.
It is not their storage of data I find creepy. It is the fact that this permanent storage is actively used, sold and traded. A deleted profile shouldn't be able to follow you around the web, and continue to build upon itself.
The "The right to be forgotten" applies to private information made public against a person's will, such as revenge porn or showing up in search engine listings. It does not apply to content willing contributed to a public community, like HN, reddit or Miiverse. What facebook does still applies, though, because a lot of the data they use, sell and trade is data their users think is private.
> At best, the users should have been given the chance to download whatever they want for private use, and the rest should rightly get obliterated.
This is a hard one. The right to be forgotten is probably something the average person should have.
But equally, human history can be understood and shaped by some of the most mundane things, and our descendants have a right to review that. To understand it.
I don't have a solution to it.
> Many people would object less to Facebook if it probably deleted all content not marked "important" after a year, rather than creepily storing everything ever.
It is not their storage of data I find creepy. It is the fact that this permanent storage is actively used, sold and traded. A deleted profile shouldn't be able to follow you around the web, and continue to build upon itself.