Digital Reputation Should Have an Expiration Date

We accept the idea that people can change. We accept that recovery is real. We accept that someone can fall apart, rebuild himself, and come back as a better version of who he used to be. Yet the Internet does not accept any of this. It treats the worst moment of your life as the permanent headline that defines you forever. That is the problem I wanted to expose. That is why I wrote about this in my Times Union op ed.

Digital reputation should have an expiration date. It should not be a life sentence. A single mistake should not follow someone for thirty years because an algorithm does not know what growth looks like. It does not know what accountability looks like. It does not know what recovery looks like. It only knows what gets clicks and what got clicks once upon a time.

For years, when anyone looked up my name, Jay Werther, they saw a moment that did not represent who I was anymore. I had already gone through the legal fallout. I had already taken responsibility for it. I had already gone into recovery and stayed there. But none of that mattered to Google. The algorithm kept the old headline in the spotlight because it was easy. Because it was old. Because it was already indexed. Because nobody bothered to update the record.

Imagine if the worst chapter of your life stayed taped to your chest for ten years. Every job. Every date. Every neighbor. Every person who met you would see that one frozen version of you and nothing else. That is what people with old digital headlines deal with. You can rebuild your life, but you cannot outrun a headline that never expires.

Some people say this is the price of living online. I think that is lazy thinking. If the Internet can update prices every hour, it can update context. If it can track your shopping habits in real time, it can learn when a headline is ten years old and no longer reflects the person involved. A society that believes in recovery should not let a search engine override that basic principle.

This is not about hiding anything. It is about accuracy. It is about fairness. It is about recognizing that a person who takes responsibility and changes course should not be defined by something that is no longer true. If the legal system has a concept of serving a sentence, the digital world should have something similar. A point where the punishment ends.

Digital reputation should not be forever. People grow. People recover. People earn another chance. The Internet needs to catch up.

For the personal side of this story, read my other post, “The Real Point of My Times Union Op Ed.”