Aleecia M. McDonald and Wendy Seltzer, Quantifying the Internet’s Erasers: Analysis through Chilling Effects Data
PLSC 2013
Workshop draft abstract:
The Internet has turned the childhood threat of a “permanent record” real (though it hasn’t necessarily made that record accurate), causing many to ask whether there’s any hope for privacy once information has entered search engines. In Europe, discussion centers on a “right to be forgotten,” which relies not on removing data, but rather de-indexing it. In the US, a 2012 bill proposed an “Internet Eraser Button,” with a similar theme of de-indexing data for children.
Opponents to these de-indexing approaches have asserted they are technically impossible. And yet, de-indexing sounds remarkably similar to how we already handle some information that corporations would prefer not to share — claimed copyright infringements. The DMCA encourages “information location tools,” including search engines, to respond to takedown notices by removing links, even if the alleged infringement remains online — much as an Eraser Button might operate to de-index data for individuals.
This form of notice and takedown has been operating for more than a decade, and the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse maintains records of such de-index requests to Google and Twitter. In this paper, we use Chilling Effects to quantify the growth of copyright take down notices over time, put forward a set of competing possibilities for comparison with the scale of problem an Internet Eraser Button for Privacy might address. We then project what the results might mean for the technical viability or intractability of addressing individual privacy harms through de-linking.