Forget Me Not

Delete…..Delete... Delete..Delete.Delete

Untag, Untag, Untag, Untag.

Block.

Unfriend.

Unfollow.

With each strike of my fingers on the keyboard, I moved one step closer to expunging the very existence of my ex-boyfriend. Or at least our public history together. It was going to take a lot of time and effort to forget him - at least in the digital eye.

There were our shared photos together on my phone, the iCloud, Facebook and Instagram. There were social connections on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. All of them had to severed or deleted. Our digital footprint had to be wiped one site at a time. Within several days, all traces of "us" - the couple we once were, had been minimized or become incredibly difficult to find. At least that's what I thought.

In the months that followed, I'd always find another "missed photograph" from my iCloud to delete. It became this vicious cycle - find a photo, delete it. Find a post, untag it. In the midst of this, I realized something simple.

Nothing is ever truly forgotten on the internet. Despite online companies assurances that old or irrelevant content is deleted, you should know better. Somewhere out there exists a copy of the thing you desperately wanted to destroy on a piece of hardware.

In modern society, the internet has become the annoying family member who never forgets anything or is quick to remind you of previous digressions. With one exception - it lacks empathy. No sentiments can be inscribed upon the bits and bytes of the photos, news articles, search or social media results that it retrieves. Nor does it police comments - where commentary can be as innocuous to debate the color of a dress or to post disparaging, potentially reputation damaging comments.

We've now entered the age where digital comments command attention and make headlines. Our President regularly addresses the American public through social media forums like Twitter. We spend more time online than ever before.

So, it's natural that individuals want to exercise control over the narrative of how they are portrayed and depicted. What you may not realize is the more important battle is over what to forget.

It's an all too common occurrence - you post something online that you later wish to remove. Or someone else writes, posts or captures your image which you object to - either the picture makes you look unflattering or perhaps you are in a compromising position. Regardless, you want those pieces of data erased which proves to be a difficult feat - people may have taken screenshots of the image, it may be saved in multiple servers or it may be considered news.

Thanks to new regulations in Europe - provided through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - users now have more control of their digital selves - specifically the capability to request search engines to "delist certain queries on the basis of a person's name."

What does that exactly mean though? It's not like I can forget my ex-boyfriend. This is not "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and as I mentioned above, it's difficult to remove your digital footprints.

In this case, it simply means that individuals using a search engine in the European Union can request to deprioritize results with their names in them. This means if you lived in Europe and requested a link to be delisted, Google and other search engines would deprioritize it - forcing the looker to take great pains to find it. However, if you live outside of the European Union, (i.e. Los Angeles), use a virtual private network (VPN) or mask your IP address, those rules do not apply. The suppressed article can be surfaced.

To the average reader, this feature may not seem that impactful until you reflect on the implications. What if you could delist the item you were most ashamed of? What could politicians do? Celebrities? Corporate employees who email accounts were hacked. If you had the chance to reclaim something embarrassing, would you?

It's an enticing and powerful capability. And it's something we should be concerned about. Earlier this fall, The New York Times profiled a journalist impacted by the right to be forgotten provision. He was sued by the subject of an article he wrote in 2008 - in which a brother stabbed the other. The brother sued the journalist on the claim that the article damaged his reputation. He did not deny the series of events or the outcome - he only protested the existence of the article. The brother won and the journalist had to remove the article.

In another request received by Google -

"In one case, an individual, who was convicted for two separate instances of domestic violence within the previous five years, sent Google a delisting request focusing on the fact that their first conviction as "spent" under local law. The requester did not disclose that their second conviction was not similarly spent, and falsely attributed all the pages sought for delisting in the first conviction. Reviewers discovered this as part of the review process and the request was ultimately rejected."

This isn't an atypical situation. Since Google (the search engine most commonly targeted) began the delisting practice in 2014, it's received over 850K requests impacting over 3.3M URLs in Europe. Of those requests, 43% met the search engine's definition to delist which is -

URLs from across the Internet that contain inaccurate, in-adequate, irrelevant or excessive information.

Which seems relatively vague and broad, right? What makes this even more intriguing is that the search engine plays the central role in this process. They receive the request, they investigate the claim and make a determination - typically within 4 days.

So, why should we be bothered about what's happening across the ocean?

It foreshadows two looming conversations.

The first - tech regulation. Every month, we march further down this path. Change is happening where search engines are no longer just aggregators of information. They are now actively participating in the process of determining what is relevant and what is not for the general public.

The second - the debate over forgetting your digital footprint. Some argue that "right to be forgotten" provisions could never exist here in the United States because of our first amendment rights. They are wrong.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, this movement started in force with the 2016 election scandal. Increased scrutiny and fines are the current de facto form of punishment but regulation will be the next step.

Follow the headlines and you'll see the bread crumbs -

Ro Khanna's call for an Internet Bill of Rights

Members of the Federal Trade Commission calling for the creation of a national privacy law

California's passage of a law called "The Online Eraser Law" which allows minors to request their content be removed

Even the artist community has shown an interest - Right to be Forgotten play that will premiere in Washington, D.C. later this month which touches on how people's lives can be damaged by the content placed online.

The conversation is coming. So take some time and read the links below to better understand this issue and form an opinion on it.

Learn more about Right To Be Forgotten -

The Right to be Forgotten - GDPR

Google's Transparency Report

State Right to be Forgotten Policy - EPIC