Google Releases Info On 2.4 Million 'Right To Be Forgotten' Requests

According to Google's latest transparency report, the company has received 2.4 million "right to be forgotten" requests since 2014, most of which came from private individuals. Engadget reports: Europe's biggest court passed the right to be forgotten law in 2014, compelling the tech titan to remove personal info from its search engine upon request. In the report, Google has revealed that it complied with 43.3 percent of all the requests it's gotten and has also detailed the nature of those takedown pleas. France, Germany and the UK apparently generated 51 percent of all the URL delisting appeals. Overall, 89 percent of the takedown pleas came from private individuals: Non-government figures such as celebrities submitted 41,213 of the URLs in Google's pile, while politicians and government officials submitted 33,937. As Gizmodo noted, though, there's a small group of law firms and reputation management services submitting numerous pleas, suggesting the rise of reputation-fixing business in the region.

Out of those 2.4 million requests, 19.1 percent are directory URLs, while news websites and social networks only make up 17.6 and 11.6 percent of them. Majority of the URLs submitted for removal are random online destinations that don't fall under any of the previous categories. As for the takedown's reasons, it looks 18.1 percent of the submissions want their professional info scrubbed, 7.7 percent want info they previously posted online themselves to be removed and 6.1 percent want their crimes hidden from search.

Hmmm

[Mr D from 63]

I wonder how much that list is worth.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Imagine the news report result that has to be removed and the way a person has to present their "reason" for removal.
The next generation should never be able to find the name as a search result:
Police actions and resulting court reports.
The role a person named in the media played in a nations once hidden chemical, nuclear, biological weapons production line? News about testing?
How to describe that news report as a right to be forgotten?

Re:

[CSMoran]

False analogy much?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

The law says no. The right to be forgotten only allows for certain crimes to be hidden.

In European countries some lesser crimes get hidden from the record after you have paid your due to society. You don't have to tell employers, it doesn't appear on your credit report etc. And you can ask Google to remove it from searches for your personal details like name.

Re:

[Opportunist]

If you're in "for life", do you really care? Moreover, would it help you in any way?

The irony

[daveywest]

Isn't the point of being forgotten that Google doesn't have info on them?

Censorship house, not an information company

[RightwingNutjob]

Today they started screening out any results containing 'gun' in their shopping results. And I mean all. For a time, searching for 'Guns and roses' would turn up empty. They've "fixed" it at the time of this post.

Re:

[rickb928]

I just searched at 1641MST on Google, Shopping, for the term 'AR-15 lower receiver assembly' . The message got was:

"Your search - ar-15 lower receiver assembly - did not match any shopping results."

That is a somewhat suspicious result. The link [google.com].

I got the same no results for term "AR-15 lower receiver" in shopping. I get results in All and Images.

I haven't used the shopping page previously that I recall, so it may be Google has no firearm component sellers in their programs, but I doubt that id because gun

Re: Censorship house, not an information company

[rHBa]

It's a shame they have to add US specific filters but at the end of the day you need protection from your own amendments unless you plan to have an armed Trump in every school.

Re: Censorship house, not an information company

[rHBa]

Eh? I think you're confusing 1970s Cambodia with the real world.

Re: Censorship house, not an information company

[rHBa]

Sorry, when I say "the real world" I really mean the rest of the western world, outside US...

Re:

[Opportunist]

Yeah, Europe is a veritable hellhole with all those restrictive gun laws.

I had to go through a whole school career without being shot at once.

Re:

[RightwingNutjob]

Indeed. They've always refused to sell guns, drugs, or explosives on Shopping. Just the ban hammer got away from them today.

Question:

[CaptainDork]

Is Google the only goddam search engine on the planet?

Why is it always, "Google, Google, Google?" Did Momma always like Google best?

Is Bing a thing?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[CaptainDork]

I hear you. I use DuckDuckGo because it (supposedly, how would I know?) doesn't rat me out, but the results are not of the same quality as Google.

On another note, I know some stories that get buried later show up as "new" news.

That calls for another takedown.

Whack-a-mole.

Re:

[novakyu]

I've been using Yahoo (I got PO'd by Google's AMP a while back) and it's pretty decent. It's only about once a week or so when I can't find the result I was looking for in the first couple pages and I have to re-try the search in Google.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What Bing is (dictionary)

[raymorris]

Merriam Webster says:
Bing : Noun
A heap or pile

A heaping pile of WHAT is an open question.

Re:

[CaptainDork]

I guess we could Google it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

So in your view, doxxing should be legal? Even if the person is just an innocent victim?

Re:

[mark-t]

I think instead of worrying about what other people think, one's time is better spent being the best person they can be wiith whatever life has given them

Re:

[mark-t]

News flash. Life isn't fair. The person who gets misidentified as someone else they don't want to be associated with is not the only person in the world with problems. Shit happens to everyone, some of it deserved and some not.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Do you deserve having your life ruined for making a mistake as a teenager?

Hell, your abortion laws say yes already, why am I asking?

Re:

[sabbede]

Depending on the sort of mistake it may not matter. Juvenile criminal records are sealed and names aren't released.

Re:

[mark-t]

I think, perhaps, you may have misread my comment.

I said "Life isn't fair".

Any notion of whether or not one "deserves" everything that happens to them is irrelevant.

Ultimately, the entire "Right to be Forgotten" concept tries to control what people are basically allowed to think about somebody by legally limiting access to past information about them. I find that puts the needs of the few ahead of the needs of the many, and it is why I consider it deplorable.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

.... should extend only as far as any people who might be able to find out about a past transgression, by whatever means, are willing to forgive it.

That is, if they are willing to forgive it in the first place, then it doesn't matter if they know about it... and if they weren't willing to forgive it, then demanding that records be altered or erased so that they can't find out about it in the first place amounts to unwarranted historical revisionism, and basically only wanting to avoid the natural consequenc

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

This actually happened to someone where I worked. She started, was getting on fine, but about a month in someone googled her name and found an old BBC article where she was interviewed about something illegal and embarrassing. Word spread quickly and in the end she quit.

At the time there was no right to be forgotten, but I hope she took advantage of it when it came in.

Re:

[mark-t]

Some things in life have permanent consequences, even if they are only the result of a single poor decision that doesn't seem to justly merit such a consequence.

And if other people are willing to judge someone harshly because of something they did in the past because they found it on Google, even if it happened so long ago that doing so could reasonably be considered "unfair" to that person, then depriving those other people of the ability to learn about it so that it can't happen is doing, essentially,

Courts do not pass laws

[manu0601]

Europe's biggest court passed the right to be forgotten law in 2014

I know democracy does not exists in EU institutions, but courts do bot pass laws. EU Justice backed it.

And while we are there, it was not a law. National parliament vote laws. EU machinery produces directives and regulations.

A little help here please:

[CaptainDork]

I think I know how search engines work, basically.

Google is censoring the "hits," in search results when certain search terms are applied.

Google is not the custodian of the data and, therefore cannot delete the data at URL destinations.

Therefore, it is not true that "Google thinks, therefore the data is," or is not.

Even if Google does a surgical disconnect within its sphere and scope of influence, the data rests right where it was.

Am I missing anything?

I would suppose that, like the bots that capture

Re:

[Opportunist]

Maybe there should be a right to FORGET, too.

The problem with the law is on clear display.

[sabbede]

Here's what's wrong with the "right to be forgotten" law: "politicians and government officials submitted 33,937 [requests]". Politicians and government officials are the exact people whose pasts must remain a matter of permanent public record.

"Wait. Stop. Don't." Wonka sighed.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The right to be forgotten does not surpass the right of free speech. Tens of millions died in Europe in living memory at the hands of regimes that relied heavily on censorhip. Well over a hundred million live under a dictator who censors and kills journalists. It is to be denied government at all costs.

The value of it, whatever it is, is secondary to mass death and loss of freedom.

Don't want to imagine, anymore, a boot stamping on a human face, forever? You have no assurance from history you have licked

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

The right to be forgotten does not surpass the right of free speech.

There is no natural right to have limited liability protection and the all the other protections that come as part of a corporation.

You as a person still have the right to free speech. If you want to accept the immense extra power and protection that come with a corporate charter, then you have to accept you don't quite have the same rights when operating under that charter.

You can still speak freely.

sleazy

[cascadingstylesheet]

"Make sure you forget this guy, John Smith ... and this gal, Jane Doe ..."