[HN Gopher] Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove imag...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of them from
       search
        
       Author : donohoe
       Score  : 177 points
       Date   : 2021-08-19 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | maerF0x0 wrote:
       | Good for them!
       | 
       | I read and really enjoyed "Permanent Record" by Edward
       | Snowden[1]. In it he talked about a time when we didn't use our
       | real names, we'd both change identities and did not expect our
       | identities to be perfectly congruent with our IRL selves. (an
       | element of roleplaying).
       | 
       | I also think that a big part of the problem touches on
       | philosophy, politics, and maybe human nature; Part of the issue
       | isn't that we have something to hide, but that we've allowed
       | people to shame us for things that are ok. We've created a world
       | where the fake is more lauded than the real, and so now people
       | feel pressured to keep up public images that are inhuman.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46223297-permanent-
       | recor...
        
         | clairity wrote:
         | > "...a time when we didn't use our real names, we'd both
         | change identities and did not expect our identities to be
         | perfectly congruent with our IRL selves."
         | 
         | i've always been struck by the concept of names (formal name,
         | pen name, courtesy name, etc) as alternate identities, which is
         | prominent in the chinese historical/wuxia dramas i guiltily
         | indulge in (e.g., often a character employs a different name,
         | and the other characters all the sudden have no idea who this
         | character is within the reality of the drama).
         | 
         | it seems like the panopticians are encouraging netizens to
         | adopt a similar assortment of names and identities to
         | compartmentalize our public and private lives.
        
         | x0x0 wrote:
         | Why is it good on google?
         | 
         | Privacy for your children, as long as parents don't mind
         | jumping through hoops created by google to fix a problem
         | created by google. With I'm sure google-standard support (fuck
         | you if it doesn't work and you aren't friends with a senior
         | employee) to go along for the ride.
         | 
         | It's the appearance of doing something while leaving 99.999%
         | (estimated) of the children's pictures right where they are.
         | 
         | Actual privacy would be proactively removing all images of
         | under 18s from search.
        
           | sealeck wrote:
           | > Actual privacy would be proactively removing all images of
           | under 18s from search.
           | 
           | But there are valid reasons for why you would want
           | photographs of u18s in search results (e.g. student athletes,
           | etc)
        
             | akomtu wrote:
             | And google could get a written permission from those people
             | before their pictures show up in search. But that would put
             | a huge wrench into the data hoarding business.
        
           | maerF0x0 wrote:
           | it's a step away from 100% of people having a bad experience,
           | I will always laud progress today over permanently delayed
           | perfection.
        
       | the-dude wrote:
       | Great timing.
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | So you have to be under 18, and prove it, to get help with this
       | problem?
        
       | YeBanKo wrote:
       | Why limit it only to under-18s?
        
       | FirstLvR wrote:
       | this leads to the very same question Rousseau and Maquiavelo made
       | a long time ago:
       | 
       | are we inherently evil?
       | 
       | Google is asuming we are, thus making this tool in order to
       | "help"
        
         | asteroidbelt wrote:
         | "We" are not uniform. Vast majority of people is good, and all
         | evil in the world is done by very small share of people.
        
       | unnouinceput wrote:
       | Hide, not delete!! Google will never truly delete anything, just
       | hide it. And then when you're of age, guess what? You're fair
       | game now.
        
       | ineedasername wrote:
       | _Giving minors more control over their digital footprint_
       | 
       | Soooo.... Why not give everyone the same control over their
       | digital footprint? Yes, minors are a protects class not being if
       | legal age, but it seems reasonable to allow anyone to opt out
       | things like this.
        
       | colechristensen wrote:
       | I went through the process of getting something removed from
       | Google, they did remove it fairly quickly after my report, but it
       | was back in the index about a month later.
        
       | jliptzin wrote:
       | Why only under 18? People lose their right to privacy when they
       | turn 18?
        
         | akomtu wrote:
         | Yes, we do. The law only governs medical data of adults to some
         | extent.
        
         | ugjka wrote:
         | Google wants no business with drunk and high minors
        
       | JasonFruit wrote:
       | > We're committed to building products that are secure by
       | default, private by design, and that put people in control.
       | 
       | How can anyone believe this from _any_ of the big tech companies
       | at this point? The only way Google  "put[s] people in control" is
       | to let the public do their customer support for them, the only
       | thing private is the details of their CIA connections, and the
       | only thing secure is their market position.
        
       | _moof wrote:
       | Possibly controversial proposition, which I offer as a discussion
       | prompt, not necessarily a position: What if we stopped
       | relentlessly cataloging and indexing information about every
       | single person on the planet in a way that anyone can search
       | instantaneously?
       | 
       | Genuinely interested in what folks think about this, pro or con.
       | 
       | Edited to add: The reason I think this question is interesting is
       | because I think it shines a light on some tension between privacy
       | rights and freedom of information.
        
         | smoe wrote:
         | I think by now the problem is more cultural than technical or
         | juridical. I mean many countries have laws in place that would
         | allow for picture removal.
         | 
         | I'm really glad, that my teenage years where before social
         | media and everyone walking around with internet connected
         | cameras on them all the time. All the stupid and embarrassing
         | things I did only live in the memories of the people I was with
         | and it is fun to talk about every now and then.
         | 
         | But when going out these days, there is an almost constant
         | "peer-surveilance" with everyone taking pictures and videos and
         | immediately sharing them online without reflecting whether it
         | is a good idea and just assuming consent of the others. Then
         | when asking people to remove it, the request is often met with
         | bewilderment or mockery why you'd want that. And sure, I could
         | legally go after the person, but that is not really something
         | you'd want to do within a (extended) circle of friends.
         | 
         | I think there are a lot of very cool things that can be done
         | these days that weren't possible in my time. But the complete
         | disrespect of others peoples privacy and their image is really
         | scary to me.
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | Also why is this restricted to only under 18? Why can't
         | over-18's also remove personal information?
        
         | nitwit005 wrote:
         | > What if we stopped relentlessly cataloging and indexing
         | information about every single person on the planet in a way
         | that anyone can search instantaneously?
         | 
         | It wouldn't eliminate this problem, assuming you consider it a
         | problem. A lot of the images floating around aren't tied to a
         | name. Anyone can save a file and re-use it in some other
         | context.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | Assuming someone starts covering their online tracks from an
         | early age they can probably _largely_ keep their online
         | presence at a minimum with some caveats.
         | 
         | - You can't really opt-out of things like credit reporting
         | 
         | - You can't control what other people post about you but for
         | the non-famous this is probably a relatively modest presence
         | 
         | - There are certainly situations where many of us have a public
         | presence under our real names. If you ever speak at most
         | conferences for example or publish an article or paper.
        
           | theptip wrote:
           | > You can't control what other people post about you but for
           | the non-famous this is probably a relatively modest presence
           | 
           | I don't think this is right, at least not in the context of
           | the parent. Perhaps it's true in regards to _public_ posts on
           | the internet, but I think it's important to consider private
           | photos.
           | 
           | If you upload photos to your private Google Photos account,
           | it will ask you "is this FriendA?" and have you train an
           | image classifier for all your friends. Even if FriendA is not
           | online, as long as FriendB is taking photos of FriendA and
           | tagging them (for example, to make it easier for FriendB to
           | search their photo album) then Google knows how to recognize
           | FriendA.
           | 
           | I have no idea if this training data is used outside of
           | FriendB's library, but I'd assume so.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | I don't think we're actually there yet but it's reasonable
             | to think that, as time goes on, more and more publicly
             | posted photos will be autotagged with the names of people
             | in them.
        
           | thomasahle wrote:
           | > You can't really opt-out of things like credit reporting
           | 
           | Most countries do fine without mandatory surveillance based
           | credit reporting. And banks still gave out loans before
           | credit cards.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | How does it work?
        
           | code_duck wrote:
           | The newspaper in a town where I went to high school has had
           | an two sentence article up in their archive for 15 years
           | that, in its vagueness, implies I was a drug addict and high
           | school dropout in the 90s when I was 16.
        
           | Mountain_Skies wrote:
           | Two sources of personal information leaks that are difficult
           | to counteract are voter registration and USPS change of
           | address, both of which are publicly available. In the case of
           | voter registration, as soon as I updated my phone number last
           | year, I went from no spam to getting dozens of SMS spam
           | message per day. About 80% of it was political but the other
           | 20% is the standard scam spam. The political spam mostly
           | ended after the election (there's sometimes fund raising
           | pleas) but the scam stuff continues on. The USPS change of
           | address information quickly ends up on all of those "Your
           | Life" type sites. It's frustrating that such basic government
           | functions end up making it easier for others to track and
           | prey on you.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | There are good reasons a lot of things have historically
             | been public records. Some of the reasons look less good on
             | balance when those records can be instantly copied, data
             | mined, and linked to any number of other digital records.
        
               | Sanzig wrote:
               | I think one potential solution is to put a small
               | financial barrier in the way of access to a public
               | record. Say it costs a few bucks to view a record
               | (depends on the sensitivity, but maybe $5-10). This won't
               | deter people who are doing records searches for
               | reasonable purposes (lawyers, journalists, curious
               | citizens) since the amount of money to look at a handful
               | of records is basically negligible, but for so-called
               | "people search" websites having to pay $5 per record
               | completely kills the business model.
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | Without a general right to control data about you, this
               | just makes things worse. Doing this naively means the
               | surveillance companies pay the one time cost of buying
               | the records, and then use/copy/propagate them freely. $5
               | for everyone in the US is $1.6 billion, which isn't cheap
               | but it's also not out of the scope of how surveillance
               | companies operate. Also the cost just needs to be paid by
               | the industry as a whole rather than each company - data
               | brokers would spend $5 on a record, and then turn around
               | and sell copies of it for $2 ea to 4 different companies.
               | Meanwhile, not being able to see the contents without
               | paying keeps the public's own awareness down.
               | 
               | No, the right answer is to give individuals the right to
               | control information that is stored about them ala the
               | GDPR. Companies should serve us individuals, not vice
               | versa. Make it so what the surveillance industry is doing
               | is clearly illegal, and force the shady operators to
               | retreat to the shadows rather than being respected market
               | leaders.
        
               | Sanzig wrote:
               | I agree that GDPR-style privacy legislation is the
               | ultimate solution, but unfortunately due to the
               | international nature of the internet that sort of
               | legislation will have difficulties until at least (1) the
               | USA passes some sort of GDPR-style federal legislation,
               | and possibly (2) GDPR-style privacy protections become
               | part of international treaties going forward.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | That's sort of already the case. $25 or so can give you
               | access to a _lot_ more information than you 'll get from
               | a casual Google. A lot of this used to be more generally
               | available but I think it's mostly behind paywalls at this
               | point which I don't think is entirely a bad thing.
               | 
               | But people can reasonably disagree on what should be
               | readily available to everyone and what should take some
               | more effort/money.
        
               | Sanzig wrote:
               | My suggestion is to put the financial barrier at the
               | government-industry interface, not at the industry-
               | consumer interface. Right now a lot of brokers slurp up
               | huge amounts of information from freely-available but
               | generally not indexed public government databases (land
               | title registries, voter rolls, etc) and collate them.
               | They then charge fees to consumers for access.
               | 
               | Requiring anyone who wants a government record to pay a
               | small fee to the government for each record would cut
               | that business model off at the knees.
        
           | wayoutthere wrote:
           | So I am nearly impossible to find. I'm trans and I changed
           | both my legal first and last name when I changed my gender
           | (and the docket was sealed so there is literally no record
           | connecting my current name to my old one). I deleted my
           | social media before I transitioned and I only have LinkedIn.
           | And my new name is too common to easily find me without a few
           | other qualifiers that would require knowing a few things
           | about me (like where I work).
           | 
           | Credit reporting is one thing, but my experience is that they
           | don't do a great job connecting the dots. I'm still missing
           | my student loans on my credit report, despite having not
           | missed a payment in the last 8 years.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Yeah, if the threat model is not wanting a casual Google
             | searcher to look you up and learn things about you, it's
             | probably relatively easy for most people to do--so long as
             | they don't have a job that basically requires them to have
             | their name and face in conference programs, on articles,
             | and the like. Or are otherwise in at least a limited public
             | eye in real life.
             | 
             | That's obviously a lower bar than preventing a determined
             | tracker from learning things about you but it's enough for
             | many people who simply don't want to turn up in a random
             | Google search.
        
         | 29athrowaway wrote:
         | The situation in the US is much better than it could be.
         | 
         | Yandex has an index of people's faces. You can search pictures
         | by face.
         | 
         | And China... you know. It is a surveillance nightmare.
        
         | hypertele-Xii wrote:
         | > What if we stopped relentlessly cataloging and indexing
         | information about every single person on the planet in a way
         | that anyone can search instantaneously?
         | 
         | This would require a cultural shift away from gossip. But
         | humans _love_ gossip.
         | 
         | If you can't stop gossip, you can't stop someone from saying
         | things they learned about another person, and by extension you
         | can't stop it from being automated neither.
        
           | thomastjeffery wrote:
           | It would still be less relentless if common individual
           | behavior was to keep personal information private instead of
           | posting everything about yourself on social media.
        
         | spoonjim wrote:
         | Any child of the Cold War thinks of the "Stasi" as an
         | organization dedicated to cataloging every bit of information
         | about everyone and using it to harm any detractors of the
         | State. Do the same thing and make it publicly available for
         | anyone to harm anyone whatsoever, and you have Google.
        
         | titzer wrote:
         | It wouldn't have been controversial just one generation in the
         | past. For example, prior to the 1990s when this became
         | technically feasible, people would have thought this was
         | downright creepy and would have clamored to ban the practice
         | preemptively.
         | 
         | It snuck up on us, or rather, it was quietly imposed upon us by
         | profiteers whose meteoric growth was celebrated by all power
         | structures.
        
           | karaterobot wrote:
           | I agree with you, but just want to politely add that it
           | didn't _really_ sneak up on us, we were warned from the
           | beginning, we just ignored it.
           | 
           | It's like in the story about the frog in the pot of hot
           | water, if someone keeps telling the frog, "you know, that
           | water isn't going to stop getting hotter," and the frog is
           | saying "seems fine to me, I think you worry too much."
        
             | wizzwizz4 wrote:
             | The frog just sits around in the pot, but we turn the
             | majority of our society into boiling pots; when the frog
             | decides it's too warm after all and jumps out, we have
             | nowhere to go.
        
             | fakedang wrote:
             | On a side note, too bad the frog story is false.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | Many of us who grew up on or before the web think this has
           | always been creepy and shudder at each new step we take into
           | darkness. Privacy advocates have been screaming into the
           | ether since the beginning, and it hasn't done anything to
           | stop the erosion of privacy.
           | 
           | A huge percentage of society is willing to accept anything
           | Facebook, Google, and Apple throw at them and simply don't
           | care about the present and future ramifications. Some think
           | about it, others enjoy the convenience or think that there's
           | no way it can harm them. Some even drink the cool aid and
           | honestly believe surveillance is good for society.
           | 
           | I fully expect to wind up in a future where we're all
           | starring in our own versions of the Truman Show. Sensors
           | everywhere, constantly streaming our choices and preferences.
           | Our health data, associations, and even thoughts and feelings
           | used against us.
           | 
           | When everyone is watching everything you do, you're no longer
           | free.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | halfhalycon wrote:
           | Agreed. I don't think people realize that privacy
           | exploitation for profit is really just a negative externality
           | and moves us away further from equilibrium (along with
           | environmental negative externalities where corporation x
           | pollutes more for short term profits but long term ecological
           | degradation)
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | > by all power structures
           | 
           | Including one of the largest power structures, "users who
           | enjoyed the convenience of finding people."
        
             | drdeca wrote:
             | "Eventually, convenience will eat all worldviews." - smbc-
             | comics
        
             | glial wrote:
             | Voyeurism is a powerful force.
        
           | foobarian wrote:
           | Meh, even before 2000 all throughout the 80s and 90s there
           | were white pages (that eventually made it to the Internet)
           | that listed every telephone user's name and address. Talk
           | about creepy! I hated it at the time but AT&T actually
           | _charged_ money (like $5 /mo) to keep your name out of the
           | directory so I let it slide.
           | 
           | I wonder why white pages fell out of favor. Maybe the global
           | access made them a bit too invasive, or people voted with
           | their feet. Or switched to mobile phones which did not do
           | this.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | >I wonder why white pages fell out of favor.
             | 
             | People could look up numbers online if they wanted to, so
             | there was just no need for a big book any longer. They also
             | never had cell numbers so they became less useful in that
             | regard. And most people don't just call a person out of the
             | blue any longer.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | I meant more why this kind of directory lost coverage
               | overall as cell phones came in. Maybe it was just really
               | that unpopular to have the name, address & number be
               | public by default.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | I don't know the history of why there was never a
               | cellphone directory. There was never a monopoly
               | controlling all those numbers for one thing as was
               | originally the case with landlines--and regional
               | monopolies after the Bell breakup.
               | 
               | I also suspect that by the time cellphones got big, the
               | public overall wouldn't have been big on cellphones
               | numbers being listed.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | Around that time frame is also when spamming picked up
               | quite a bit, while at the same time early mobile plans
               | rarely had unlimited talk time making the spam
               | particularly costly.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | Most people's early mobile plans were very limited, the
               | person receiving the call paid for it in the US, and
               | costs were even higher for calls that weren't from your
               | immediate local area. And, as you say, junk landline
               | calls were becoming a bigger deal.
               | 
               | This old article https://slate.com/news-and-
               | politics/2001/06/why-isn-t-there-... claims that the
               | wireless carriers didn't want to put out a directory
               | because consumers would be upset if they had to pay for
               | junk calls.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | pomian wrote:
             | It was a useful tool. Still would be. Online searches for
             | people are hard now. But note, those were limited
             | databases. Phone number and address. No birth dates,
             | security numbers, etc. It was a tool, not a weapon.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | We still have a much different attitude toward that kind
               | of data today. If some company leaked all its customers'
               | names, addresses and phone numbers it would be considered
               | a terrible scandal. In the 80s you would be upset if the
               | phone company didn't print out that same data and give it
               | to every customer for free.
        
               | mixmastamyk wrote:
               | The recent tmobile breach?
               | 
               | A database feeds more evil than a printed book could,
               | even if scanning/ocr it were feasible.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | On the other hand, there was a huge outcry at the time
               | over Lotus Marketplace
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Marketplace
               | 
               | That sort of information is regularly bought and sold
               | today. A breach that's just names, addresses, and phone
               | numbers will draw a few headlines, some comments on HN,
               | and a bunch of scolding tweets. But I don't imagine
               | _most_ people see that as particularly sensitive
               | information in most circumstances. (Some exceptions of
               | course such as the fact that you 're in a particular
               | database is itself sensitive.)
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | dalbasal wrote:
           | >> It snuck up on us, or rather, it was quietly imposed upon
           | us by profiteers
           | 
           | Into the early 2000s, everyone still knew never to use a real
           | name online. Murderers would probably get you or something.
           | Don't want randos knowing you you are. Besides, handles were
           | cooler. Some well known people had publicly known aliases,
           | but aliases were the norm... like on HN.
           | 
           | In my bubble, it was FB that really broke through this. I
           | heard about fb as a social network, but with real names. That
           | way you could friend people from real life. It was actually
           | quite a revelation, like a public address book... very
           | useful.
           | 
           | Anyway... Zuck is, IMO, more of an "eye for the tides" guy
           | than the tide itself. He realised that " _relentlessly
           | cataloging and indexing information about every single person
           | on the planet in a way that anyone can search
           | instantaneously_ " was happening and he decided to be there
           | first.
        
             | OJFord wrote:
             | > Into the early 2000s, everyone still knew never to use a
             | real name online.
             | 
             | In the mid-2000s I was at school, where we were
             | simultaneously being taught (in 'Information and
             | Communication Technology' lessons) never to use a real name
             | online [0], and signing up to Bebo & MySpace with our real
             | names.
             | 
             | It's (there beginning to exist people) growing up with the
             | internet that all but killed that, I'm sure of it.
             | 
             | [0] with some limited web ring/social network type site for
             | schools, for which we given aliases and then, I don't know,
             | wrote BBcode and marquees and stuff about our school-safe
             | interests and hobbies
        
             | irrational wrote:
             | I've never used my real name online. I still remember my
             | shock when google said you had to use your real name for
             | Google plus (or was it google wave? I can't remember
             | anymore.) I noped right out of there.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Anonymity was mixed.
             | 
             | Definitely pretty much everyone was anonymous on warez
             | boards and the like. On the other hand, a lot of local BBSs
             | actually had something of a local community in real life as
             | well. And the people accessing Usenet from corporate and
             | academic accounts often used their name and affiliation.
        
             | spoonjim wrote:
             | Bezos has said repeatedly that nobody is the tide itself.
             | You capture opportunity not by swimming to the tide but by
             | getting in place before it comes.
        
               | nebula8804 wrote:
               | The real question is how do we know what tides are coming
               | in the future so we can position ourselves to be ready.
               | Thats where the luck comes into play in my opinion.
        
             | sorry_outta_gas wrote:
             | Yeah both FB and Google killed the pseudonym, migrating the
             | internet from a cool new place to a cesspool
        
           | floatingatoll wrote:
           | We had X-No-Archive: YES throughout the 90s, which thankfully
           | DejaNews honored (up until Google purchased them in 2001,
           | anyways). Search engines are destroying the social fabric of
           | humanity, making it possible for haters to hate with perfect
           | precision. We've been on the wrong course ('index everything!
           | archive everything!') for thirty years now, and we've earned
           | today's toxic and deadly Internet that resulted from it. Oh
           | well.
        
             | actually_a_dog wrote:
             | > ...haters to hate with perfect precision.
             | 
             | Except... not. All too often, we see stuff people did or
             | wrote years ago being used against them. Those things may
             | not reflect the person they are today, and that's even
             | worse than "hat[ing] with perfect precision."
        
               | floatingatoll wrote:
               | That's certainly one view, but it's not my view. If
               | people don't feel safe participating today on some topic
               | that haters have google alerts set up for, then those
               | future archives will be heavily biased in favor of
               | content that's acceptable to the haters of that time.
               | Sounds like a great way to ensure the spread of hate
               | across social generations to me.
        
               | pvaldes wrote:
               | Searches will always have the problem of the lack of
               | context. A song or a literary work can mean totally
               | different things if we lack the context or understand the
               | years when they were written.
               | 
               | The second and more serious problem is people thinking
               | that algorithms are so smart that are infallible. This,
               | when a much more sophisticated human brain would have a
               | serious trouble trying to navigate the long lists of
               | random dictionary words that we enter in a browser.
               | 
               | Netizens in general don't understand, or don't care, and
               | just simplify and fill the gaps until they have a
               | caricature that can fit in some "well known stereotype"
               | slot. The result is that our societies are being more and
               | more fractured, radicalized and isolated into different
               | groups.
        
             | lstamour wrote:
             | In defence of search engines, when content disappears from
             | the web, it disappears from the search index within months.
             | And robots.txt has been a thing since forever.
             | 
             | But I agree with the overall point, that archiving is
             | distinct from indexing, and we need better mechanisms than
             | copyright to take down content given many services terms
             | allow content to be kept forever and/or make it hard to
             | delete content uploaded by others. This might come down to
             | free speech vs privacy, though.
        
               | Sanzig wrote:
               | > And robots.txt has been a thing since forever.
               | 
               | Unfortunately, both archive.org and the affiliated
               | Archive Team now intentionally ignore robots.txt files.
               | 
               | Archive Team, in particular, wrote a very irritating and
               | condescending screed called "ROBOTS.TXT IS A SUICIDE
               | NOTE" [1]. Apparently, they don't understand that not
               | everyone wants their stuff backed up forever and they
               | treat anyone who disagrees with them as a moron. And that
               | manifesto wasn't written by some random team member, it
               | was from Jason Scott himself.
               | 
               | I know that Archive Team isn't officially part of IA, but
               | they are tightly integrated with their archiving
               | operations. It's a bad look.
               | 
               | [1]
               | http://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Robots.txt
        
               | floatingatoll wrote:
               | If I ever again post a website, I'm going to post it with
               | basic auth, so that search engines won't index it to
               | begin with. Exposure doesn't pay the bills, after all.
        
             | clairity wrote:
             | > "...the wrong course ('index everything! archive
             | everything!') for thirty years now..."
             | 
             | that's overly broad. although i particularly dislike
             | dichotomies, we can draw a simple one here for illustrative
             | purposes: there's public and private information, and omni-
             | indexing/-archiving is the "wrong course" only for private
             | information, with private information encompassing more
             | than just sensitive data, including any personal
             | information a person chooses not to divulge publicly.
             | 
             | humanity has absolutely advanced from indexing all public
             | information, even considering the exponential rise of
             | disinformation and idle bullshit. instantaneous knowledge
             | coalition and mass multiway communication are the two
             | astonishing advances stemming from the internet. and now
             | we're dealing with the inevitable but unintended negative
             | consequences of these amazing advances.
        
               | floatingatoll wrote:
               | Your chosen dichotomy is both common and insufficient,
               | and I am with you in disliking it. The dichotomy I'm
               | considering is threefold instead: Worldwide, Community,
               | and Secret.
               | 
               | This is what the classical public/private dichotomy is
               | missing: the social information strata of "local
               | community only" information that gets lost when we
               | convert everything to the Internet. Without a Community
               | context, there is no safe place from haters. Searching a
               | Community's content should not be possible from a
               | Worldwide context.
               | 
               | My comments on HN are Community, not Worldwide, but
               | modern search indexing has no grasp of the difference
               | between those two, and lumps them both together as
               | Worldwide -- what your dichotomy calls "Public". Yes,
               | some people will intentionally write content for
               | Worldwide consumption, but the vast majority of my
               | written words are intended for Community consumption
               | only. We see this every day, when some unwitting soul on
               | Twitter gets their off-the-cuff Community-context tweet
               | selected as Trending and the entirety of Worldwide
               | descends upon them. Even celebrities, people who
               | specialize their career in producing Worldwide content,
               | have started to realize that they, too, need Community-
               | context spaces to live and breathe in, and that online
               | social media is _not_ a safe Community space for them.
               | 
               | What _is_ an example of a healthy Community space, on
               | today 's Internet, that protects against the content
               | discovery efforts of Worldwide haters, while still
               | allowing new participants to join the space? (Certainly
               | it's not HN, which is trying and failing to be a
               | Community space operating in Worldwide context.)
               | 
               | ps. I forgot Secrets!
               | 
               | Secrets are mine to divulge in the Worldwide context, and
               | no one else's. My biometrics, my medical records, my
               | fetishes would all be good examples of what we would
               | expect to be kept Secret. I understand and accept that
               | some Secrets will be upgraded to Community context in the
               | matter of course of human sociology, and I don't expect
               | idle gossip to end. But I have every right to expect that
               | my Secrets will not be divulged to the world, even if
               | they're known to my Community. Unfortunately, due to
               | search engines deciding that all Public content is
               | therefore Worldwide, all Secrets that are shared within
               | any private Community will end up indexed for all the
               | haters to find. That's a very lonely way to live, not
               | being able to be vulnerable within a Community. No wonder
               | people use Facebook; it offers a well-known Community
               | context (private groups) that's not searchable from a
               | Worldwide context.
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | small counter: that's not what google does. How many times has
         | anyone clicked on the "next page" when it comes to search
         | results? Which is another problem Google refuses to fix: if
         | you're not in the top 10, you're not on the internet as far as
         | the rest of the internet can tell.
        
         | jollybean wrote:
         | My original take on Google when it another search engines were
         | starting is that it should be illegal for them to scrape
         | businesses without 1) explicit permission and licensing, and
         | that 2) doing so across borders should be governed by treaty.
         | 
         | 1 would be easily taken care of because businesses want their
         | stuff indexed, but 2 would be quite something i.e. the ascent
         | of privacy laws.
         | 
         | I'd also like to see this 'tool' made available to anyone. I'm
         | not sure if random photos of people are 'in the public
         | interest', or beyond that if we really get some kind of
         | transcendent value out of all that 'data'. My bet is that most
         | of the power we get from 'sharing' has to do with explicit
         | knowledge i.e. news, research, data APIs etc.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | It's only instantly searchable if it's public. The only place
         | you can't control this is when family members or friends take
         | pictures and insist on uploading them to Facebook as public
         | pictures, when the implication of not taking a picture/imposing
         | stipulations are negative.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | etskinner wrote:
         | Looking at the other side of the spectrum, do you think we
         | should still have information available online about prominent
         | people? Politicians, historical figures, etc.?
         | 
         | If so, where do you draw the line between people whose
         | information is useful to the public and people who shouldn't be
         | cataloged?
        
           | Hizonner wrote:
           | If somebody is seeking a position of power and/or trust from
           | the public, then the public should get the same information
           | about that person that we'd allow an employer to ask for
           | about a prospective employee. So their qualifications for the
           | job, how they intend to do the job, how they've done in
           | _similar_ jobs before, and how they 've handled _similar_
           | types of trust in the past.
           | 
           | Otherwise, frankly, fuck the public.
        
           | _moof wrote:
           | Indeed, that's a very difficult line to draw. In the US we
           | have the concept of a public figure, and I'll admit I have no
           | idea how that's actually defined. That being said I've also
           | wondered if it's too blunt a concept. Are public figures
           | entitled to _any_ privacy, and if so, where is _that_ line? I
           | see celebrities being hounded by paparazzi while trying to go
           | about their daily lives, for example, and while I understand
           | the principles behind why that 's legal, I have to imagine
           | it's a real drag.
        
             | zabatuvajdka wrote:
             | .
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | See New York Times v. Sullivan (US SCOTUS)
             | 
             | I haven't checked the exact wording of this definition but,
             | as a summary, "The Supreme Court has defined public figures
             | as those who hold government office and those who have
             | achieved a role of special prominence in the affairs of
             | society by reason of notoriety of their achievements or
             | vigor and success with which they seek public's attention.
             | "
        
             | germanier wrote:
             | In Germany we draw the line on what type of information the
             | person in question makes public by their own choice. Do you
             | invite tabloids for a home story and let them take
             | pictures? Then other pictures of your home can be
             | published. If you on the other hand never talk about your
             | home and family publicly let alone invite media in, that
             | can remain private. In addition, if the information is
             | relevant to a larger topic (e.g. a corruption scandal
             | involving a politician's home) then you can show anything
             | relevant to that.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | I used to think it was very weird for job applicants in Germany
         | to have to attach a passport-like photo of themselves to their
         | CVs/Resumes... And then! People gladly populate their linked-in
         | and other social media not only with their likenesses but
         | voluntarily offer their opinions attached to such images and
         | real life personae!
         | 
         | So...
        
         | leetcrew wrote:
         | I don't actually think having hits for your name through google
         | is the most pressing privacy issue we face today. if I can find
         | you by searching your name, one of two things is likely true:
         | 1) you have opted in to indexing by having a public facebook,
         | linkedin, etc., or 2) your name has appeared in a news article.
         | the solution to 1) is pretty simple; don't have public profiles
         | with your real name if you don't want to be indexed. 2) is a
         | more subtle issue, but is more of an issue with news articles
         | than google.
        
           | sillystuff wrote:
           | 3) Your employer, school, social club, etc. has included you
           | in their organization's public directory, and does not offer
           | the option to opt out, nor do they protect the directory in
           | any way from being indexed / scraped.
        
             | leetcrew wrote:
             | I think that can be addressed as a more general case of 2).
             | I'm not necessarily saying it's okay that you end up in
             | google's results because your name appeared in some random
             | news article or because your alma mater has a public,
             | scrapeable directory. I'm saying that the responsibility
             | lies with the entity that originally makes the info public,
             | even if that doesn't leave us with a single entity that's
             | easy to pressure.
             | 
             | google ought to respond to reasonable requests to delist,
             | but I don't think it's reasonable for it to _guarantee_
             | that certain types of information never get indexed.
        
               | bcrosby95 wrote:
               | I'm not buying it. The problem is something being public
               | _and_ easily searchable. One of these things came before
               | the other. It 's totally Google's responsibility and a
               | problem with Google (or, more generally, information
               | aggregators), not these things that existed for literally
               | hundreds of years before companies like Google came
               | along.
        
           | macksd wrote:
           | I wouldn't say it's the most pressing privacy issue, but we
           | can collectively focus on more than just a single priority.
           | For instance, I wouldn't call someone's medical career
           | useless just because they weren't working on reducing heart
           | disease.
           | 
           | For a long time the first Google result for me was someone
           | from my school posting about work I did. I didn't find their
           | comments particularly complimentary. I wasn't wild about the
           | idea that someone at a prospective employer would probably
           | Google me and see that. I didn't like the idea of harassing
           | the site owner into taking it down, but I will say a big
           | motivator for me in open-source has been flooding the
           | Internet with better reflections of myself to drown out stuff
           | like that. Stuff ends up on the Internet without people's
           | knowledge or express consent all the time. When I joined
           | LinkedIn they already knew a bunch of people I could be
           | connected to. I never gave them that info about my
           | relationships. Other people did! First thing I got was a
           | suggestion to connect with my ex-girlfriend. I hardly think
           | I'm an anomaly with stuff like this.
           | 
           | edit: As another datapoint, I have a coworker who is
           | fanatical about privacy. Will refuse to stand in group
           | photos. Will ask you to delete photos they may appear in if
           | they see you taking one. Gives random names on restaurant
           | orders. No LinkedIn, no social media. I Googled their name:
           | tons of accurate photos, an accurate phone number, school
           | history, etc.
        
             | ehsankia wrote:
             | This is missing the point though. Let's focus on #1 from
             | above; most people who post things online probably want
             | Google to index them and even do SEO tricks to get there. I
             | post stuff about myself on my website because I want people
             | to see it.
             | 
             | The issue comes when I put stuff on my website about
             | someone else, as in your example. I want my content to be
             | on Google, but you want my content off of Google. At that
             | point, there's a conflict and it's not clear to me who
             | should be resolving it and what position Google should
             | take.
             | 
             | The options are:
             | 
             | 1. No one gets to be indexed, which will hurt the millions
             | who want people to discover their content
             | 
             | 2. Google has to manually decide in every single instance
             | like the one you mention in your post, that seems
             | unrealistic
             | 
             | 3. The status quo, which is that Google indexes what's
             | posted publicly.
        
               | macksd wrote:
               | Or a 4th option: if, as you say, most people are doing
               | SEO tricks to get there, why not just only index stuff
               | that has indexing-specific metadata associated with it. I
               | don't see why this needs to be so different from an opt-
               | in version of robots.txt. IMO this only becomes unclear
               | when you're collecting user content en masse from non-
               | technical users, say in a case like Facebook, etc. And
               | IMO Facebook just shouldn't be passing on user-content
               | from individual consumers to be indexed, especially if
               | they encourage you to upload data that references other
               | people.
        
               | ehsankia wrote:
               | That doesn't solve the majority of issues brought up
               | here. Just like it wouldn't solve all the things you
               | mentioned about your colleague posting things you aren't
               | happy about.
        
           | c22 wrote:
           | Or 3) you've ever used a phone, paid a bill, or given your
           | contact information to any business, in which case there will
           | also be several "teaser" results likely containing your name,
           | age, birthdate, current and previous addresses, and phone
           | number hosted by third party services who will happily
           | include more information for $20 or 30 bucks.
        
           | ThrustVectoring wrote:
           | The solution to both is actually to have such a common name
           | that you get lost in the noise. If your first + last gives
           | seven digits of google search results, you have to put in
           | some serious SEO work to appear on even the first ten pages,
           | rendering this vector private by default.
        
             | toast0 wrote:
             | Personally, someone with my name won a Pullitzer, so I'm
             | never going to be on the top page.
             | 
             | Even name + (previous) employers barely finds me, because
             | it's all about using those employers' services in relation
             | to the books. Name + location is about book signings.
             | 
             | The only downside is when my namesake was interviewed on
             | the radio and a) I kind of freaked out a bit when they said
             | Terry Gross was going to talk to me later in the day, and I
             | was totally unprepared, b) it was really weird listening to
             | her introduce me incorrectly, I didn't grow up where she
             | said or anything. Also, people send me pictures of 'my'
             | books when they see them, which is a lot.
             | 
             | I love the relative anonyminity though.
        
           | surfpel wrote:
           | > you have opted in to indexing
           | 
           | Most people outside tech won't know that they're opting into
           | this or what the consequences could be. Children especially
           | can't be expected to understand that giving away all that
           | personal data could have serious consequences in their
           | future.
        
             | leetcrew wrote:
             | maybe true ten years ago, but I really feel that you would
             | have been living under a rock to not understand that at
             | this point.
             | 
             | take linkedin for example. what could possibly be the point
             | of making a linkedin account other than to have people you
             | don't/barely know message you about jobs, or vice versa? or
             | look at how people use instagram. the whole point of using
             | the platform seems (to me) to be to accumulate as many
             | follows as possible.
             | 
             | I do think there's at least an argument to be made about
             | reasonable defaults. unless it's overwhelmingly clear that
             | a person would want their profile to be public, it should
             | be private by default. perhaps private should be the only
             | option for minors.
        
           | bcrosby95 wrote:
           | Or you own a house. Property records are public. If you
           | search my name you can find my home address because of this.
           | 
           | Some search engines also index WHOIS data. So if you don't
           | use privacy options then you may be searchable via that too.
        
             | babuskov wrote:
             | > Some search engines also index WHOIS data. So if you
             | don't use privacy options then you may be searchable via
             | that too.
             | 
             | Most registrars have started to hide the real info because
             | of GDPR. I live outside of EU, but my registrar stopped
             | showing my name and address in WHOIS queries without having
             | to opt into their privacy options.
        
           | Retric wrote:
           | There are many ways your photo can be made public that have
           | nothing to do with either of those. For example a company you
           | worked for might publish a photo of you without asking you
           | etc.
           | 
           | What's more interesting is how inaccurate a lot of this data
           | is. Spokeo for example seems to think I am related to someone
           | because they share a last name and we lived in the same
           | apartment building at some point. Google's approach of simply
           | collecting third party information simply isn't reliable.
        
             | ehsankia wrote:
             | So should Google be the moderator of the entire WWW and
             | resolve every single dispute on any websites posting
             | information about someone who doesn't want their
             | information there? Or should no one ever have their website
             | searchable because a small handful of websites post content
             | which 100% of the people in the content don't agree with?
             | And what if I post about someone who assaulted me, and the
             | criminal wants my content off my website? These are not
             | easy problems and "let's throw it all out" doesn't seem
             | like a solution.
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | Publishing accurate information is already difficult and
               | their trying to automated it. Having Google post your
               | information is concerning, having them potentially
               | confuse the victim with the perpetrators is a whole other
               | issue.
               | 
               | Which isn't a problem for Google because their standards
               | seem to be good enough to target advertising, but it is a
               | problem for everyone else.
        
         | ProAm wrote:
         | A better way to phrase that question is: Do you like the
         | ability to print money while others feed the money machine for
         | you?
         | 
         | This will never go away without regulatory intervention. Too
         | much money in it, too much control, and control leads to power.
        
           | Majestic121 wrote:
           | You're already arguing that it is desirable to stop this
           | indexation : it's far from obvious, and the question from OP
           | is precisely whether we should try to make it go away or not,
           | not whether it's possible.
        
             | ProAm wrote:
             | It's not possible.
        
         | ciguy wrote:
         | While Google does this publicly, there are tons of private
         | indexes doing the same thing for marketing, intelligence and
         | other purposes. As long as people keep posting things online
         | someone will be collecting that info and trying to make money
         | off of it.
        
         | lettergram wrote:
         | I have done everything in my power to keep my kids off the
         | internet. I tell family members not to take photos, I don't
         | send them through email, I won't take photos with phones that
         | are cloud connected, etc etc.
         | 
         | The reality is, I walk in and still see a grandma who doesn't
         | respect the wishes of my wife and I and are adding filters to
         | my kids faces. Now Instagram has their photos. No consent
         | given. I don't think she posted, but clearly her phone gave
         | Instagram access.
         | 
         | Imo we need laws forbidding image indexing or collection of
         | images. We also need some serious protections around data. The
         | reality is Google, Microsoft, Apple, Chinese communist party,
         | zoom, etc all have too much data and own everyone. Literally, I
         | can't imagine the government taking any action at all because
         | of their influence.
         | 
         | So I think we are done, frankly.
        
         | extropy wrote:
         | Another angle: there is a huge non-public industry of
         | cataloging all the public and not so public information.
         | Available to whoever is ready to pay.
         | 
         | Public indexes is just the surface of the iceberg. And
         | regulating them down would just be more profit for the pay-to-
         | play.
        
         | fzzzy wrote:
         | We could do this by shifting the bulk of online communication
         | to private/ephemeral spaces. The stuff that wants to be
         | cataloged and searched would just be whatever is left in
         | public. I am pro.
        
         | gnopgnip wrote:
         | What does it mean specifically if we "stopped relentlessly
         | cataloging and indexing information about every single person
         | on the planet in a way that anyone can search instantaneously",
         | making it illegal to catalogue all of this information?
         | Imposing a tax? Requiring permission of those involved?
        
       | Ansil849 wrote:
       | > In the coming weeks, we'll introduce a new policy that enables
       | anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to
       | request the removal of their images from Google Image results.
       | 
       | OK, how? This blog post has a lot of posturing about how Google
       | is doing this-and-that, but I see no actual instructions or links
       | to how to do this removal process. Where is the actual process
       | for how to request removal?
        
       | mmmBacon wrote:
       | Why should this be limited to under 18?
        
         | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
         | My thoughts too. I don't want to show up in googles indexes for
         | literally everything I do.
        
         | Hizonner wrote:
         | Because Google estimates that the profit impact of pretending
         | to care about The Children is positive, whereas the profit
         | impact of actually caring about anybody would be negative.
        
           | donohoe wrote:
           | Damn. That's harsh...
           | 
           | But I can't argue against your logic.
        
         | dleslie wrote:
         | Almost certainly for some form of legal compliance. It looks
         | like Google is doing the bare minimum.
        
           | g_p wrote:
           | GDPR in Europe makes a number of provisions for under-18s,
           | including data removal I believe. This is likely an attempt
           | to get ahead of enforcement of those rules by privacy groups.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | giantg2 wrote:
       | "We're committed to building products that are secure by default,
       | private by design, and that put people in control."
       | 
       | So why is tool just for under 18s?
        
         | nend wrote:
         | The fact this tool even exists is damning to google. "We
         | automatically index and show people pictures of minors. Now
         | we've fixed this by allowing minors to tell us!"
         | 
         | Pick one:
         | 
         | Private by design
         | 
         | Make it easier for strangers to track you with out you knowing
        
           | 8note wrote:
           | Im not sure it's damning to google as much as to the rest of
           | the internet.
           | 
           | It's indexed by Google; somebody else hosted it publicly
        
           | true_religion wrote:
           | Why is it damning? It's not obvious to me, apologies.
        
             | skytreader wrote:
             | I'm not the guy you're asking but what jumped out to me is
             | that this change creates a database of images of minors and
             | the damning/ironic part is that _these are images of people
             | who don 't want to be easily searchable to begin with_.
             | Imagine the damage if this somehow leaks.
             | 
             | If my wording above sounds convoluted then let me
             | paraphrase: a blacklist is a database too. Google's
             | blacklist will contain assured images of minors because the
             | minors/guardians reported them as such.
             | 
             | Sure it can be hashed/MLed/Bloomfiltered instead of a
             | tabular listing but someone with enough patience and
             | resources can probably make something out of it. (To be
             | honest I don't want to peddle FUD and I'm speaking out of
             | my depth here so I'd be glad to hear an assessment from
             | someone with qualified experience in this area.)
             | 
             | This would be greatly alleviated if everyone was allowed to
             | remove their images in search. I can't help but think it
             | would help https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216733 .
        
           | sealeck wrote:
           | To privacy or not to privacy is not the question; the
           | question is privacy _for whom_.
        
           | handrous wrote:
           | Broad swaths of behavior by the spying tech giants just needs
           | to be outlawed. Discussions about how to mitigate the harm
           | aren't going to fix much. The harmful behavior should be
           | outright banned. "Google and Facebook just _have to_ creepily
           | spy on people, force some workers to look at horrible images,
           | et c., to operate ". OK, cool--sounds like they _shouldn 't
           | operate_, then, if that's true.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | jacobsievers wrote:
         | I think I might be missing something. I don't see any mention
         | in the post regarding a tool being "introduced."
        
           | jjulius wrote:
           | Click link, ctrl+f "introduce"
           | 
           | >In the coming weeks, we'll introduce a new policy that
           | enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or
           | guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google
           | Image results.
        
         | summerlight wrote:
         | Because many criminals, businessmen and politicians will find
         | this tool very useful for them?
        
           | skytreader wrote:
           | But it just removes photos _from image search_ ; AFAICT text
           | search results are unaltered. Perhaps I would no longer see
           | Boris Johnson failing to comb his hair in Google Images but I
           | can still read articles about it and they will still have
           | accompanying photos.
        
           | noway421 wrote:
           | Politicians can already use it with the right-to-be-
           | forgotten-style national policies
        
         | sirmoveon wrote:
         | It wouldn't be a web search but a web index by then.
        
         | pomian wrote:
         | I think I have an answer. All photos of under 18's left in the
         | database, will be used by Apple(and others), for their hashes.
        
         | jagan120 wrote:
         | Exactly, why only for under 18s? This should be available for
         | everybody.
        
           | hermannj314 wrote:
           | I am playing devils advocate here, but if you are the solider
           | in Abu Gharaib torture photos, I am not sure you should have
           | a right to purge the internet search of those photos.
           | 
           | So there had to be a middle ground between freedom to find
           | information and an individual's privacy. Do you want Google
           | drawing that line?
        
             | skytreader wrote:
             | But it's just an internet search of photos isn't it? You'll
             | still get links to news articles and write-ups and anyone
             | reading about Abu Gharaib tortures will still see these
             | _and the accompanying photos_. A prospective employer
             | googles your name, it could still come up, just not the
             | photos.
        
             | BuildTheRobots wrote:
             | They have already drawn that line, or at least the EU right
             | to be forgotten has. All sorts of results are missing when
             | searching from an EU member state (or the UK). I'm not sure
             | I agree with it, but we seem we'll past the line already...
        
               | oaiey wrote:
               | That is a difference in the European understanding of
               | punishment and especially redemption. After your
               | punishment was served, what redemption is possible when
               | your acts cannot be forgotten?
               | 
               | The dignity of the human being is untouchable (paragraph
               | 1 of the German constitution). What dignity can you
               | expect when a nude picture of you exist online. Or of a
               | stupid speech you gave. Or of your childhood carneval
               | costume as a Nazi. Or when mug shot of DUI incident is
               | online. Or when your stupid, disgusting, humiliating
               | behavior as a soldier in Iraq is documented everywhere
               | after you served for your war crime. When you have the
               | concept of redemption in your society, than it needs to
               | be feasible to be redeemed.
               | 
               | Yes I understand that there are extreme examples but it
               | falls in the same category if you consider the dignity of
               | the human being as the most precious thing.
               | 
               | So a consequence, the right to be forgotten exists.
        
             | asteroidbelt wrote:
             | If you are the soldier in Abu Ghraib torture photos, you
             | should be judged by the court of law, not bullied by
             | neighbours and online mob who make mistakes too often.
             | 
             | > Do you want Google drawing that line?
             | 
             | Yes, this is the correct question.
        
             | SerLava wrote:
             | Yeah this is probably why. If this was accessible to you
             | and me, it would be accessible to every ghoul in the public
             | eye. Kids are the only group that can unambiguously be
             | granted unconditional total privacy.
        
         | samvega_ wrote:
         | Probably because of GDPR, and similar laws coming into place.
         | You cannot actually automatically hold people under 18 to
         | whatever terms they've consented to on Facebook etc. like you
         | an for adults. You'd actually be required to get their parents
         | consent, which obviously they don't.
        
       | villgax wrote:
       | Wow, way to go Google! Shift the onus to the people who have not
       | authorised you in the first place.
        
       | perihelions wrote:
       | All EU residents have this ability due to the GDPR. Here's what
       | the request form looks like:
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-reques...
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | This is neat, maybe if I need data to be removed I can just
         | take a vacation to Europe and fill out the form from there,
         | that makes me protected under EU law for the duration of my
         | stay.
        
       | dleslie wrote:
       | It's a shame that this is only for minors.
        
       | LudwigNagasena wrote:
       | When you were a kid you had to fake that you are above 18 to get
       | access to something you want, now you have to fake that you are
       | under 18 to get access to something you want...
        
         | darwingr wrote:
         | This is my favourite take on this, honestly.
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | Good. Their search engine.
        
       | not2b wrote:
       | One difficulty with this is the number of teens with social media
       | accounts that have a false age. Most of our friends' kids and
       | many of my nieces and nephews fall into that category, some
       | because they got an account before age 13 and lied, or were older
       | than that and lied to have access to some forums, or just because
       | they just wanted to pretend to be older (my own daughter is an
       | introvert with good sense and isn't on social media). I suspect
       | that Google and Facebook are well aware of this internally.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | poopypoopington wrote:
       | Would love this, am over 18
        
       | clircle wrote:
       | > we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or
       | interests of people under 18
       | 
       | Sounds like I should adjust the age on my Google profile.
        
         | WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
         | This is a right move by Google.
         | 
         | - Even for adults, ad targeting based on gender or age (or
         | race) seems... wrong?
         | 
         | - Would like them to come out and assume all personalization
         | and recommendation systems they have also waive this for
         | children. E.g.: YouTube recommendations are based solely on
         | similar videos versus profile, location, viewing habits,
         | whatever other magic they probably do.
        
           | asteroidbelt wrote:
           | > Even for adults, ad targeting based on gender or age (or
           | race) seems... wrong?
           | 
           | Wrong how?
           | 
           | I don't mind ads target based on my gender (e.g. male suits,
           | not cocktail dresses), age (no teenager sneakers), race
           | (probably not interested in Diwali party).
           | 
           | But practically it doesn't matter anyway. The neural network
           | will learn my gender, age and race based on my previous
           | behavior. It will be encoded in trained data, but not
           | explicitly visible. And because of that modern ads developers
           | don't actually need sex, age and race parameters, it won't
           | make targeting better.
        
             | Tenoke wrote:
             | Depends on how much data they have on each person but
             | typically adding variables that can be mostly inferred
             | still usually improve model behavior by a little bit
             | overall.
        
           | aaomidi wrote:
           | Honestly disabling all ad targeting has been the best thing
           | I've done.
        
             | asteroidbelt wrote:
             | Is your browsing experience better now? Or you think it
             | makes world a better place?
             | 
             | I like certain ads. For example, I often click of property
             | ads just to learn what they are building in the city I
             | live, what is the price range etc. Because one day I'm
             | going to buy.
             | 
             | Of course I'd prefer no ads, but better this than random
             | junk IMO.
        
               | aaomidi wrote:
               | I would argue my browsing experience is better ~ I do
               | enjoy seeing the random junk because that also doesn't
               | make my brain think about "hmm maybe I would like to buy
               | that". Even if I actively avoid thinking about an ad I
               | saw, it still impacts my psyche.
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | Google has been prompting me for the past several months to add
         | my birthday. Leaving it in doubt seems to be the best way
         | forward.
        
           | smt88 wrote:
           | Unfortunately the price you might pay for this is getting
           | locked out of your account. It happened to my brother. One
           | verification step was supposed to be birthday.
        
         | rand0mx1 wrote:
         | Then many youtube videos will be inaccessible.
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Dummy account for YouTube access (or rather, YouTube-dl
           | scraping).
        
             | teddyh wrote:
             | youtube-dl can't download age-restricted videos from
             | YouTube anymore.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359561
        
               | FeistySkink wrote:
               | You still need to be able to see them in the first place.
               | That is prove your age to Google.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Hence the dummy account to segregate your day to day
               | Google activities from your YouTube retrieval activities
               | with a cookie piped into ytdl.
        
               | ModernMech wrote:
               | Take a youtube url and put 9xbud.com/ in front of it.
               | Works like a charm for me.
               | 
               | e.g. https://9xbud.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2
               | eXs4pCs3... (A video of guys smoking weed)
               | 
               | This actually works for most sites with embedded videos.
        
               | a1369209993 wrote:
               | No, it does not:                 $ youtube-dl -f18 https:
               | //9xbud.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k
               | [generic] watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k: Requesting header
               | [redirect] Following redirect to https://9xbuddy.com/proc
               | ess?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k
               | [generic] watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k: Requesting header
               | WARNING: Could not send HEAD request to https://9xbuddy.c
               | om/process?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3
               | k: HTTP Error 404: Not Found       [generic]
               | watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k: Downloading webpage       WARNING:
               | Falling back on generic information extractor.
               | [generic] watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k: Extracting information
               | ERROR: Unsupported URL: https://9xbuddy.com/process?url=h
               | ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | ModernMech wrote:
               | Don't use youtube-dl. Just go to that url in your browser
               | and download from there. I'm sure a script to leverage
               | this wouldn't be too hard to write.
        
         | sam_goody wrote:
         | Actually, Google collects MUCH more data (I know that doesn't
         | sound possible) from children under 18.
         | 
         | Open the Family filter and look at what they colect. It is
         | like, everywhere you go, every page you open, every image you
         | look at etc. - Becuase, you know, "think of the kids".
         | 
         | And yes, they may be collecting too much about every one, but
         | this is just another level. And then, for the tiny fraction of
         | kids that opt oout, they have a HUGE data point about them that
         | can be combined with future actions to later build an even more
         | powerful profile.
        
       | stephenhuey wrote:
       | Considering how many parents I know who post public photos of
       | their children on social media, it'd be great for other services
       | to provide such tools as well.
        
       | Cipater wrote:
       | There is barely any popular sentiment behind keeping any age
       | group's images off the internet. Quite the opposite actually,
       | people want their images online and they'll gladly and
       | enthusiastically hand them over if you give them a platform to do
       | it.
       | 
       | The journey we're on with our lax attitudes towards privacy will
       | finally be complete when Big Tech truly sinks its teeth into
       | health/biology.
       | 
       | We will give them real time access to data on our bodies, our
       | health and our diets and mint the first trillionaires in the
       | process.
       | 
       | Interesting times are coming.
        
         | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
         | > There is barely any popular sentiment behind keeping any age
         | group's images off the internet
         | 
         | Depends on the group. People victimized by LEO's lustly
         | pleasure for posting mugshots - they'd be interested.
        
           | asteroidbelt wrote:
           | I'm not sure it's just lustly pleasure. It might be in the
           | public best interest to know who are these people committing
           | crime. E.g. are they skinheads or hipsters?
           | 
           | In the UK (AFAIK) law enforcement (and probably even
           | newspapers) are not allowed to share photos (or any personal
           | details) until people are prosecuted.
           | 
           | And after people are prosecuted, I wouldn't call prosecuted
           | people "victimized".
           | 
           | Don't know how it works in the US though.
        
       | ajay-b wrote:
       | How about over-18 too?
        
         | Minor49er wrote:
         | What, no concern for those who are exactly 18? :P
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | I'm curious how they enforce rules here. It has to be pretty
         | messy trying to only remove images of people from when they
         | were < 18.
        
         | hanniabu wrote:
         | Especially over-18 that gradce pictures online from when they
         | were under 18.
        
       | intricatedetail wrote:
       | Why only under 18s?
       | 
       | Everyone should have a right to remove data from search. Most
       | data Google indexed without consent.
        
       | distancelight wrote:
       | Over 18 are also children, just trapped in older bodies.
       | https://imgflip.com/i/5k4b3w
        
       | flowerlad wrote:
       | This is an improvement over their previous stance, which was that
       | young people should change their name upon reaching adulthood
       | [1]. This doesn't go far enough though, because just removing
       | photos isn't enough.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-...
        
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