The Right Response to the “Right to Delete”

[Commentary] The decision by the European Court of Justice, requiring Google to delete search results that display a Spanish user in a bad light, continues to cause consternation among online experts and supporters of free speech.

Unwittingly, the European Court appointed Google a global online censor, imposing on it the unenviable burden of policing content on the Web. In doing so, it furnished Google (and similar online intermediaries) with strikingly vague criteria and little process, to boot. And if understaffed privacy regulators intend to handle complaints case by case, they will soon be swamped by an unmanageable deluge of individual take-down requests.

But condemning the Court’s decision should not invalidate the concerns it sought to address.

In general, much of our information is subject to fairly clear norms that guide us in who can accessible what and for how long.

Why can’t technology do more to ensure that certain types of recorded data decays or becomes less accessible with time? Much more than law, technology can account for subtle differences in individuals’ subjective privacy expectations, which fluctuate based on the context and nuance of interpersonal relationships. Let’s have many more companies experiment with default settings that allow for data decay.

While these solutions are imperfect, they chart a promising path toward a world where some friction allows us to retain and hide a bit of ourselves.

[Polonetsky serves as executive director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum; Tene is vice president of research and education at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)]