[nickpp]

I am happy for you. Now, what do you think, was the ability for you to delete accounts worth the fact that the mayor of my town keeps winning elections in spite countless corruption charges and scandals - all conveniently wiped off the internet?

Regulations are usually well intended but second order effects are rarely thought out at all.

[cccbbbaaa]

The right to be removed from search results is not systematic, there is a balance to attain between privacy and public interest. Corruption charges from politicians will be hard to scrub, for instance. See:

GDPR, article 17(3)a: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

> 3. [Right to erasure] shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary:

> (a) for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;

More precise information from WP29. See the criteria list, beginning in page 13: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinio... This was from the DPD era, but still applies to GDPR.

How Google handles removal requests: https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en&sjid=...

[nickpp]

GDPR is also used in my country to protect the identities of people in administration making sweetheart deals with their spouse/children/friends company for public works. All opaque now.

Also the privacy of politicians being investigated for corruption and graft. And corrupt judges for freeing their customers.

One evil piece of legislation. But hey, at least Google/Facebook/Amazon is not selling “my data”!

[janosd]

Corrupt politicians win elections in non-GDPR countries a whole lot too, unfortunately. I'm no political scientist, but I think it has a lot to do with people being unwilling to learn about and engage with the political system, among others. I live in Austria and when it comes to more complicated topics soch as politics, or IT for example, people are outright proud to claim ignorance. Most people actually don't know that they can and should write their EU MEPs. I have, and I have gotten into very fruitful conversations with them. However, instead of asking our kids to know institution names by heart, maybe asking them to engage with the system would be a good start.

Also, if I were into social studies, I'd look at social media and how they drive outrage, and a good way to show kids how such an influence operation works so they don't fall for it. My wife and I have been a little active in this area, but way too little to make any meaningful difference, unfortunately.