I see a lot of people claim that this is just about having information at the top of a search result, and I agree that's better than outright censorship.
But, I still take some small amount of umbrage with people claiming that nothing is being erased, just people's ability to find it. I think that's a very blurry line to draw - the idea the it's OK for information to exist somewhere in the void, but making it too easy to access is not OK.
The intent behind rules like this is to make it much harder for people to access information. If Google isn't the Internet, and delisting won't suppress speech, then what value is the law? If Google is the Internet, and delisting from their site will hide information from the public, then how is this not censorship?
There's no point in getting myself delisted from Google unless I expect that this will prevent most people from being able to find my information. People search names on Google because they want that information. The only way I can see for GDPR to stay effective or valuable in hiding me from those people is if it becomes a blanket ban on indexing or curation in general.
I agree with this. I am surprised that rather than trying to define itself as journalistic, Google isn't trying to present itself as an archivist (I am unaware if this has any legal meaning).
I wonder what would happen if an explicitly archival service like the Wayback Machine got itself a state of the art search algorithm and became widely used in casual search. Would it also be required to delist?
But, I still take some small amount of umbrage with people claiming that nothing is being erased, just people's ability to find it. I think that's a very blurry line to draw - the idea the it's OK for information to exist somewhere in the void, but making it too easy to access is not OK.
The intent behind rules like this is to make it much harder for people to access information. If Google isn't the Internet, and delisting won't suppress speech, then what value is the law? If Google is the Internet, and delisting from their site will hide information from the public, then how is this not censorship?
There's no point in getting myself delisted from Google unless I expect that this will prevent most people from being able to find my information. People search names on Google because they want that information. The only way I can see for GDPR to stay effective or valuable in hiding me from those people is if it becomes a blanket ban on indexing or curation in general.