The EU"s "right to be forgotten" ruling made huge waves when it was enacted back in May, but the seemingly sweeping nature of the takedowns have angered many groups, including, it seems, Britain"s largest news agency, the BBC.
The BBC has objected several times to stories and articles published on its website that were summarily removed from Google"s search results under a "right to be forgotten" request. One of the most controversial was a blog post by BBC economics editor Robert Peston, which was apparently removed by a request from a user who had left a comment under the blog post.
In total, the BBC says 46 of its articles have been removed from Google"s search results under the right to be forgotten ruling; to combat this, the outlet plans to publish a running list of every news story and article on BBC websites that have been removed from Google"s listings.
The BBC cites a "lack of formal appeals process" as reasoning for publishing a list of their removed articles. The process to remove an article from Google listings under the EU"s rulings is stringent, and requires a detailed explanation of why the link should be removed, as well as a valid form of photo identification to prevent fraud. But the BBC notes that this process may not be strict enough, and could potentially be used to remove stories based on personal opinion or political objection.
Since the EU enacted its ruling, droves of users have taken advantage of Google"s right to be forgotten offerings. One in ten requests, the search engine says, have originated from the U.K., and almost 500,000 links have been evaluated for potential takedown.
Source: BBC