Could You Ever Forget Me? Why People Want to be Forgotten Online

Abstract

The concept of people’s memory maintains the finiteness of time and capacity. However, with the advancement in technology, the amount of storage memory a person can use has increased dramatically. Given that digital traces can hardly be erased or forgotten, individuals have begun to express their desire to be forgotten in the digital world, and governments and academia are considering methods to fulfill such wishes. Capturing the difficulties in terms of a cultural lag between technological advancements and regulations on individuals’ data privacy needs, we identify six motives for individuals wishing to be forgotten online and investigate its expected effects on online content generation through a qualitative content analysis of 222 responses from open-ended surveys in Korea. Our findings provide implications for the literature on individual privacy and the right to be forgotten employing the cultural lag, as well as, elaborate further on the relationship between being forgotten online and the legitimacy of such requests of individuals. Additionally, implications for data providers, data controllers/processors, and governments to address this lag and build a balanced system of personal information are provided.

Everyday digital traces

“…We argue that the haunting affects of data are the ways in which digital traces and your data-self emerge and are rendered visible, and this includes emotions such as regret. These findings also contribute to ethical debates about Big Data and the right to be erased or forgotten (Beraldo and Milan, 2019;Kwak et al, 2022) and also to the temporal and material functions of the data journey (Bates et al, 2016). The data capabilities approach advanced by Kennedy (2018) is also useful because it highlights the role that emotions play in ordinary people's everyday engagement with data.…”

The Right to be Forgotten: Emerging Legal Issues

“…5 . As Chanhee Kwak et al (2021) emphasize, the general capacity of human memory has dramatically increased with the help of information and communication technologies. People hardly forget the moments of their lives that are recorded and stored digitally, thereby shifting the perception of memory from being volatile to durable 6 .…”

Approach versus Avoidance: A Self-Regulatory Perspective on Hypocrisy Induction in Anti-Cyberbullying CSR Campaigns

“…Interventions fail partly because traditional persuasion techniques generally fail to consider that cyberbullying has unique characteristics of anonymity, remoteness, and diffused responsibility so that users are disinhibited and deindividuated (Lowry et al, 2016 ). Moreover, cyberbullies cause no direct physical harm and may lack malicious intent (Kwak et al, 2021 ). Perpetrators and spectators generally escape accountability.…”