May 21, 2009
Should Data Take-Down be a Right?
Interesting post over at Mashable today about the failure of many social network sites to take down personal images even after the user has explicitly “deleted” them. The issue of data take-down is one we’ve started discussing in the W3C Social Web Incubator Group. The example of deleting images you’ve placed online is a simple one, but what about all the other digital traces we leave on the Web? In a world where more and more of our identity is expressed online, should data take-down be a universal human right? We’re collecting user stories that illustrate concepts like this in order to provoke some thought, both about what the future of a more social Web should look like and what technical underpinnings need to be in place to make this happen.
Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 10:24 under W3C, Web 2.0
Tags: socialweb, W3C
1 Comment
I'm an American Ex-Pat living in London. I'm
a father of two and husband of one. I founded 
Data take down is only one tactic of a larger issue, and one that is not working well as the Cambridge research you mention has shown. I favour an approach based on information accountability and wrote up on this at
http://gizmonaut.net/blog/writing/2008/09/information_accountability.html
You may also be interested by Bruce Schneier’s essay at
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/02/privacy_in_the.html
br -d