The Web Means the End of Forgetting

by Jeffrey Rosen
NYT July 19

Really interesting article about the social and legal ramifications of personal data storage on the Internet, and how technology – and society – might evolve to soften the privacy impacts of bad personal decision-making.

Some things that stood out to me:

Facebook users spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook now has almost 500 million members.

The Library of Congress is planning on acquiring and storing the entire archive of Twitter posts since 2006.

There is a website called LOL Facebook Moments, that collects and stores embarrassing Facebook posts.

There is an organization called ReputationDefender, that you can pay to monitor your reputation and go around to different websites and ask them to remove stuff about you, and create new pages or multiply links to make positive stuff about you come up higher in Google searches.

Facebook has an application called PhotoFinder that you can use to find photos of yourself (or anyone), regardless of how it was tagged or if you were formally identified.

Services like Date Check, Zittrain said, could soon become even more sophisticated, rating a person’s social desirability based on minute social measurements — like how often he or she was approached or avoided by others at parties (a ranking that would be easy to calibrate under existing technology using cellphones and Bluetooth).

New concept: “Reputation Bankruptcy,” wherein you can wipe the slate clean and start all over.

New term: “Twittergation,” suing people for posting slanderous or false information.

Gmail has a feature one can enable (available late on weekend nights only) that requires one to solve simple math problems prior to sending email.

“without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.” – Viktor Mayer-Schönberger