Week Ten

I know we’ve talked about it in class, and I think I’ve posted about it before, but I can’t remember for sure; the idea of the right to be forgotten online is interesting to me. I’ve always thought of my data being collected and staying online forever as inevitable. I’ve never really wanted that bad to remove my data from any one company or website, except for the occasional email subscription I never actually signed up for. When I delete accounts online I kind of just assume that they’re going to keep my data on the back burner and never get rid of it, and that’s something that I don’t really care much about. Like other stuff we’ve talked about in this class, I know there are a lot of people that do care about their online privacy. I think the EU is definitely on the right track with the General Data Protection Regulation law they passed. It makes sense that people should be able to request that their data be completely removed from a company’s databases. I also think that it’s an amazing idea to make the terms & conditions everyone always skips over more understandable. I think that if more people could understand exactly what they were giving companies permission to do then they would care more and be more cautious and advocate for more change here. I know that I, personally, would pay more attention to what I was agreeing to.

I don’t understand the technical side of how the internet really works and what the Ted Talk was talking about, but I think the idea of an internet/network that people can use without interference form government or corporations is cool. I do think, though, that if these networks become more popular, someone will eventually decide to monetize it and they’ll become more like our internet that we have now. This is something that should still be closely watched.