[nitrogen]

What is the difference between a fake profile and a pseudonymous profile? Is it really fraud to use something other than your real name in non-financial settings? What about other-than-real data? People have been using fake names and fake data since the dawn of the net; why would this be any different?

[icebraining]

I don't see any problem with the practice per se, but I'd be wary of codifying such Right into law without opening a can of worms.

[TeMPOraL]

Isn't the right to be forgotten a can of worms already? In theory it's about individuals and their privacy, but in practice it's about fraudsters hiding their fraudlent behaviour so that they can continue being fraudsters.

[krapp]

You're basically making the case that, if you have nothing to fear, you should have nothing to hide. But, replacing "fraudsters" with "terrorists" or "online weed dealers" in your comment states the law enforcement and intelligence community case against personal privacy pretty clearly.

I think that, in practice, it's about whether or not social media sites and search engines should be forced to maintain a market on personal data to serve as a crowdsourced proxy for state-sponsored surveillance.

[TeMPOraL]

I see a difference between privacy (preventing information about you from getting out) and rewriting history after the fact. Historical data is a public good, it's much bigger than an individual and his affairs, whether legit or not.

[krapp]

>I see a difference between privacy (preventing information about you from getting out) and rewriting history after the fact.

I don't, in this case. Search engines and social media sites were never intended to serve as arbiters of historical truth. Is it really a good idea to suddenly pretend they are, and insist they act like it?

[TeMPOraL]

Search engines weren't intended to be anything, they weren't designed up front by committee. They just ended up what they are. Twitter also wasn't intended to be the channel for officials to communicate with the public, nor Facebook the ultimate Yellow Pages, nor was Google Maps commissioned to become the world's most popular GIS.

You could argue that preserving public goods is the task for the government and yes, we shouldn't insist that private companies do their job for them. But here, we have a company that wants to do that job out of its own will, and the governments insist they stop.