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This is true for very many things, the act of making it searchable is to make it follow you into the future.

The example I used in the other conversation about this when it first emerged is a real one, I know a girl who was the victim of an attack and chose to contact the police. The attacker was young and the court scrubbed his name from public record, but the local newspaper reported the victim's name and profession. Now you have a victim with a permanent smear against her created by an easily accessible record of fact (the newspaper, not the court record). The problem with the patriarchy and an unequal society being that woman who are victims of attacks are frequently met with doubt and victim blaming, "Was it something she wore?", "Did she act in any way as to provoke it?"... and so a victim is punished by the availability of information. Her peers have remarked how they've seen it on Google, because in her profession researching your peers is what you do.

The courts aren't wrong to record things.

The newspapers aren't wrong to report things.

But neither action was intended to be a permanent cross for the person to carry.

The girl in question? Her view is that if she knew it would end up on the front page of Google for her name, she would never have gone to the police.

Now ask yourself, is that the world you want to live in? I'm very glad the EU legal system agrees that it isn't, and that the EU politicians enshrined that it isn't. It makes me glad to be European.



> The newspapers aren't wrong to report things.

Is there such an EU country, where newspaper is permitted to disclose identity protected victims by officials?

> Now ask yourself, is that the world you want to live in?

I want to live in a world, where search engines do what they are supposed to do - search the internet. For the hamrful information available, authors shall be accounted responsible.

Shall we pass any law by giving colourful examples? Yes, censorship can be positive, if it protects the girl you knew, I agree, but it does not stop being censorship.


Sorry, I just accidentally down voted you. I was trying to upvote.


No worries, it seems such a divisive topic it's almost entertaining watching the upvotes and downvotes aggressively cancel out each other.

I didn't realise just how extreme the opinion on this is. Shame HN doesn't show this in how the votes are displayed... I get that they're not displayed... but black text vs shaded implies only positive or negative, and hovering around 1 vote with lots of up and down votes is interesting in itself.




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