Do We Have a Right to Be Forgotten Online?
This essay was originally published in the Times Union: https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/commentary-right-forgotten-online-21129109.php
It’s not the world’s biggest problem, but it’s a quietly dehumanizing one. Imagine that when someone types your name into a search bar, the very first thing that appears isn’t your work, your education or anything you’ve done in recent years. It’s a single news story, frozen in time. One headline becomes your permanent digital résumé.
For a decade, that’s been the reality for me. The story itself, from a North Country media outlet, can’t even be read without paying for a subscription. It serves no current public purpose, yet it’s the defining piece of information about me online. That one link has followed me through job searches, housing applications, even dating. More than once, I’ve watched opportunities quietly disappear because of something that lives behind a paywall.
The piece that shadows me is about a DWI from a decade ago. There was no crash; no one was injured. I pleaded guilty, accepted the consequences, completed treatment and did the long, unglamorous work of rebuilding.
What lingers online isn’t that context. It’s the brutal shorthand of the headline.
I’ve tried, politely and privately, to ask that the story be de-ranked or de-indexed. De-ranking lowers a link’s “value” as a search result, so it no longer appears at the top. De-indexing removes a result from search results entirely. Google’s process applies only to privacy or legal violations, so they wouldn’t help. The publisher of the original story told me they weren’t willing either to de-index the story or to add an editor’s note updating readers, those willing to break through the paywall and read the story, on the outcome of my case.
The result is a modern purgatory: You can change your life in every meaningful way, professionally, personally, morally, and still be reduced to a headline from another era. Search engines reward what’s been clicked most.
I don’t want to pretend I didn’t earn the headline. I was an alcoholic, living with mental health issues I hadn’t faced. I served my sentence and rebuilt my life. But keeping the headline forever frozen in place ignores the mental health awareness we claim to value today.
This isn’t about censorship or erasing history. It’s about proportion and fairness. Our legal system recognizes rehabilitation and second chances; search algorithms do not. Technology has outpaced our ethics.
It’s easy to shrug this off as a first-world inconvenience until it’s your turn; until you apply for a job, rent an apartment or try to volunteer, and that single search result quietly closes the door. We’re not talking about hiding crimes or deceiving anyone. We’re talking about recognizing growth, context and the right to be seen as a whole human being.
Some countries have adopted limited “right-to-be-forgotten” policies. In the United States, change may come instead through voluntary newsroom practices. Like adding outcome updates or time-stamping old pieces with prominent context. Or through more transparent search-ranking systems that down-weight stale hits that no longer serve a public purpose. Either way, the conversation has to start somewhere.
Maybe it starts with people like me. People whose names are still tethered to an outdated story, trying to live in the present.
I still believe in accountability. I just also believe in forgiveness. And I believe the digital world should reflect the same grace we extend to each other in real life.
Jay Werther, a former Capital Region resident, lives in Utah.
Jay Werther lives in Summit County, Utah and writes about mental health, digital identity, recovery, bureaucracy, and modern systems.