The Right to Be Forgotten
By Emiliano Rodríguez Nuesch and María Morena Vicente
The internet has a long memory. Longer than people. Longer than growth, regret, or repair. The Right to Be Forgotten starts from that imbalance. It is the idea that some pieces of personal information — old news stories, outdated records, moments taken out of context — should not follow someone forever just because they are searchable.
This is not about hiding crimes or rewriting history. It is about proportionality. A teenage mistake, a false accusation, or a painful episode can become a permanent digital identity, long after it has lost relevance. For people without public platforms or legal teams, this kind of exposure quietly shapes their lives: job applications that go unanswered, relationships strained, a constant need to explain a past they no longer live in. Compassion here is not emotional; it is practical. It asks whether our systems leave room for people to move on.
Legally, the strongest protection still comes from Europe. Under Article 17 of the GDPR, individuals can request the erasure or de-indexing of personal data when it is no longer necessary or is causing disproportionate harm. Courts and regulators continue to refine where the line sits — between privacy and the public’s right to know. Outside Europe, the picture is uneven but shifting. India’s new data protection law includes erasure rights. Several Latin American countries are strengthening similar protections. In the United States, there is no federal right to be forgotten, but recent state laws targeting data brokers, mugshot websites, and children’s data suggest growing discomfort with permanent digital punishment.
The human stories make the issue clearer than any regulation. In the U.S., Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer wrongly linked by the FBI to the Madrid bombings, still lives with the digital traces of an accusation proven false.
Monica Lewinsky has spoken about how search engines froze her identity in a single chapter of her life, long after she had become someone else.
In Spain, Mario Costeja González became known for a case that was, in fact, very ordinary: an outdated debt notice that no longer reflected his life, but kept resurfacing online.
Across Europe, many more cases involve teachers, nurses, and small business owners — not public figures — asking for something modest: not to be endlessly defined by their past.
The Right to Be Forgotten is ultimately about how we design memory. Whether our digital systems mirror the harshest version of judgment, or something closer to how humans actually work — imperfect, evolving, capable of repair.