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Google’s updated ‘right to be forgotten’ stats: 497k links evaluated, 42% removed

forgotten

Google has updated its transparency report for the controversial ‘right to be forgotten‘ ruling, requiring it to remove links to sensitive information about individuals when it is considered out-dated or irrelevant.

The company revealed that it has now received 144,907 requests to evaluate almost half a million links, and that it has so far removed 41.8% of those. Links to facebook topped the list, with 3,331 URLs removed from search results … 

Google also gave examples of requests it had acted on, providing brief summaries of the cases and the decisions it had reached. For example:

A woman requested that we remove a decades-old article about her husband’s murder, which included her name. The page has been removed from search results for her name.

A financial professional asked us to remove more than 10 links to pages reporting on his arrest and conviction for financial crimes. We did not remove the pages from search results.

Google opposes the ruling, stating that it was being asked to make “difficult and debatable judgements” based on “very vague and subjective tests.”

While the ruling does not apply in the U.S., celebrity lawyer Marty Singer on Wednesday threatened Google with a $100M lawsuit over links to leaked celebrity nudes, claiming the company isn’t honoring the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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