Lost Umbrellas: Bias and the Right to be Forgotten in Social Media Research

Since the European Court of Justice handed down its ruling in the 2014 Costeja case – finding that Google and other search engine operators must consider requests made by individuals to remove links to websites that contain the requesting party’s personal information – scholars, policymakers, legal practitioners, media commentators, and corporate representatives around the globe have been vigorously debating the so-called “right to be forgotten.” In the American context, many worry that recognizing such a right would undermine the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and press. In the European Union, a renamed “right to erasure” has become law as part of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2016. The right to erasure “prevent[s] the indefinite storage and trade in electronic data, placing limits on the duration and purpose for which businesses” can retain such data (Tsesis, 2014, p. 433) and holds that individuals may request the deletion of data when those data have become irrelevant, are inaccurate, or cause the individual harm that is not outweighed by a public benefit in retaining the data (Koops, 2011)