Not persuasive to me, and rather a strange article for the Guardian to be publishing considering the low opinion it casts on all forms of journalism:
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These examples shine a light on the very problem that the right to be forgotten in part addresses, even if only imperfectly (other solutions could have been, and should still be, explored). Journalistic logic is curiously asymmetrical. “Dog bites man” is not news; “man bites dog” most certainly is. Similarly, arrests are more newsworthy than exculpations.
If the former nanny, or the rapist’s friend, are otherwise unremarkable, publication by a reputable press outlet will rocket to the top of their results, and effectively stay forever. Acquittals, and people moving on with their lives, are boring – they are not news, and they are rarely reported with the same intensity as crimes, arrests and convictions. And court records are often not online or readily searchable.
So what’s the result, in the imperfect mirror of reality that is the web? Next time you search for these people – or a potential employer or possible date does, as we all do – these results come up.
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I presume the Guardian is aware that, since it uses Google Custom Search as its site search engine, articles it publishes are freely available to American searchers, but filtered when searched in Europe! Given this, I would like to know what the Guardian itself is doing to counteract this "asymmetric journalistic logic". Do they publish acquittals and apologies with as much intensity and prominence as their original article? Do they go back and edit or remove articles? Do they take active steps to prevent certain articles being indexed by search engines? Are they actively campaigning to encourage other reputable journalistic outlets to do likewise? Or do they leave it all to Europe and Google to clean up after their mess, and not worry about what the rest of the world can see?
The right to be forgotten is an anachronism. The world has changed. The Internet has happened, the Web has happened, search engines have happened, social media has happened, and that there are consequences.
People need to get used to the idea that not everything they read on the Internet is true, or things that were true when published may no longer be true. One bad review of a hotel doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't go there. One ill-thought-through comment on Facebook doesn't mean you should terminate a lifelong friendship. And one mention of a name in an old newspaper article isn't enough to ruin somebody's reputation today.
To attack Google and other search engines is to attack completely the wrong thing. Google is simply the medium that introduces the journalist to the reader. The root problems lie with (some) journalism and the mindsets of (some) readers. Both of these need to be changed, if we are to grow with the Internet and have access to all that it offers, rather than limit ourselves by retaining some kind of default privacy offered by the past, which seemed to have been based on not having instant access to the information that was in the public domain.