Erase and rewind

I recently returned to my car after a lazy lunch in Camps Bay to discover my back seat window had been smashed and my iPad stolen. After getting over my annoyance at the loss of my device, my frustration at the invasion of my personal space, and the fact that there was now a gaping hole in the side of my car, my thoughts were soon occupied by the data I had lost.

All of my varsity notes, the contact details of people I had worked with over the years, and other personal information, were now in the hands of a petty criminal. And then I thought about my Internet search history, and had to laugh at the fact that were these baddies at all interested in my online activity, they would quickly discover my penchant for British comedy and Buzzfeed quizzes. My desire to erase all of the content on my device, essentially deleting all traces that the iPad had belonged to me, got me thinking about how much information we make available online for all to see, and about the implications of the "right to be forgotten" concept, which has been making news in recent weeks.

In May, the European Court of Justice ruled that search engines - like Google - are "data controllers" and must entertain requests, particularly those from private citizens, to have links to damaging content removed from their databases. This legal concept allows individuals to delete information, videos or photographs of themselves from Internet records, preventing them from being stigmatised as a result of actions performed in the past. In a nutshell, if there is no public interest reason for a piece of information about you to appear as part of a search engine's results, then you can petition to have it removed. Finally, the world has gifted us with the ability to hit "control + Z" in the online chronicles of our everyday lives.

If responses to the judgment are anything to go by, it seems there are a lot of people who would quite like to eradicate their previous acts of foolhardiness from the mighty data warehouse that is the Internet. Since the ruling in May, Google has received well over 70 000 take-down requests that span a quarter of a million Web pages.

While this court verdict may have been an online privacy win for you and I - with this figurative Web-based witness protection programme allowing us to forever erase that sexy selfie or controversial social media post - the legislation does have various historical implications, as the folk over at Google recently found out. Just last week, the world's most popular search engine created an advisory committee of tech experts, academics, media officials and independent advisers to assist in the implementation of the policy.

This came when a few hiccups in the process occurred, after links to pages referencing certain individuals on sites like the BBC and Guardian were removed from searches, before being reinstated. This saw several news organisations pointing out flaws in the court decision and dubbing Google's execution of the ruling as "clumsy". Coupled with this, one has to question if the legislation will become a means for prominent figures to expunge their previous indiscretions from Internet archives in an attempt to avoid public scrutiny. And one also has to consider whether information warehouses like Google should even have to take responsibility for the monitoring and dissemination of content that is created by others, but just so happens to appear as part of their search results.

The world has gifted us with the ability to hit "control + Z" in the online chronicles of our everyday lives.

I can think of a few people who would like their online errors erased from history. Take US Airways, for example, which got Twitter users talking after tweeting a graphic image featuring a naked woman in a compromising position with a toy aeroplane, in response to a passenger's complaint over a flight delay. Or a similar social media faux pas that occurred when First National Bank's Twitter guy, @Rbjacobs, joked that the bank's radio advert personality, Steve, had been absent from recent advertising because he was putting bombs under the wheelchairs of disabled people in Afghanistan. Bad move, Mr Jacobs, bad move. And I'm sure aunty Helen would like to take back her controversial "refugee" comment, which landed the Western Cape premier in a great deal of hot water at the time, and is still haunting her over two years later.

But, does the ability to delete unfavourable content promote an Orwellian society characterised by misinformation, the manipulation of the past and denial of the truth? Ultimately, Google may be able to erase unfavourable elements from your online history, but you can never truly erase the past.