Irish Examiner view: Dangers of deleting digital history
Items File By Google 'irish 55 Family Search Has Delisted Picture In Sean Engine Having By Whose The The Succeeded Quinn, Examiner' Published
Back in 2017 as the pan-European data laws were grinding relentlessly into place we warned that society was sleepwalking into an era where digital records will be rewritten, disguised, and removed to protect reputation and vested interests.
It gives us no great satisfaction to point to the accuracy of this prediction by reporting that the family of former billionaire Sean Quinn has succeeded in having 55 items published by the concerning some court cases and separate coverage of various activities delisted by the Google search engine.
This does not mean that the information has been deleted from the digital platforms of the , but that it becomes harder to find in a general search because Google has established itself as the default retrieval mechanism for most consumers.
We are not the only newspaper which has been subjected to this bowdlerisation, and the Quinn family is by no means the only people to take advantage of the opaque rules under which Google makes and communicates its decisions.
But it is, by and large, a channel of action dominated by the rich, the powerful, and the influential and their lawyers trading on a so-called “right to be forgotten” which looks to European case law for its justification. Or specifically, something which is known in the legal text books as “Google Spain” which some free speech campaigners hold to be one of the poorest decisions in the history of the European Court of Justice.
Back in 2017, we said: “Many people are attracted by the idea of editing their past and resetting their digital persona.
“Previous indiscretions can be airbrushed away, inconvenient comments could be diluted and amended. Emphasis can be altered. Context can be added. Who is to know?
“Some lawyers and sages even hold out the future prospect of individuals being able to declare reputational bankruptcy, and start all over again.”
Even when we reviewed this situation seven years ago, 43.2% of delisting requests to Google were successful. Aside from the uneven and often unchallengeable nature of the protection it allegedly provides, such subjective decisions, made for the most part by paralegals whose primary responsibility is to the technology company which employs them, will also affect the public record if newspapers continue to shrink in size, scope, and market penetration.
As we wrote four years ago, in the clash between the public interest in knowing and the right to be forgotten, the likelihood is that the “right” will trump the “interest” and the collective memory will be diminished accordingly.
This is not healthy. Such decisions by Google must be more transparent and open to counter arguments before they are enacted. Otherwise, it becomes increasingly to resemble an abuse of a monopoly position and an arbitrary interference with freedom of communication.