- Reuters
In May 2014, Europe’s top court ruled Google can be forced to erase search results that link to content about individuals on the Web. Under the ruling, people have the right to request that search engines remove links to news articles, court judgments and other documents in search results for their names.
Google has adhered the ruling, a surprise decision that inflamed debates about the balance between privacy and free speech, while fighting it in the courts.
Google said in a blog post it has received more than 348,000 requests to remove the links from search results — some requests involve multiple links — since the company began accepting them in May 2014. The disclosure highlighted a peculiar aspect of the ruling: that search engines are the arbiters of the removal requests.
Nearly two dozen examples provided by Google show the tightrope it
walks in making its decisions. Google didn’t explain why it removes some
links and keeps others. But it dropped clues signaling it takes into
account whether someone is a public or private figure, whether it
considers crimes to be minor, and whether embarrassing incidents took
place during a person’s private or professional life.In one case, Google removed a link about what it called a minor crime, and then had to remove a second link to a newspaper article about Google removing the initial link. In other cases, Google said it denied a politician’s request to remove a link to news about a decades-old criminal conviction. But it removed a link about what it called a teacher’s minor conviction years ago.
Google listed the top domains impacted by link removals, saying they accounted for 9% of all requests. The list includes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and various sites for Google services.
By: Brian R. Fitzgerald.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam