The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Behavior

Shaming is usually referred to as the publication of perceived anti-social or illegal behavior of an individual in order to condemn or humiliate him. It has some virtues: it makes it harder for people to get away with wrongful behavior, and it promotes justice. It also promotes freedom of expression and enables efficient deterrence. By spreading information on the behavior of individuals, shaming encourages one to maintain his reputation and facilitates beneficial transactions. Finally, it helps the public to avoid inefficient services.

Yet shaming raises many problems. Anyone can shame another based on individual, as opposed to universal, values, thus offending certain segments of society just because they are different. Shaming can also insult human dignity disproportionately. When the initiators of shaming are private citizens, as opposed to courts, it is committed without fact-checking or due process and can promote the dissemination of falsehoods. Shaming can also spin out of control and develop into a “lynch mob,” violence, and harassment. Thus, an action that started with an aspiration to promote social order can lead to social turmoil.

Shaming is nothing new—people have been doing it for centuries. But the digital era makes shaming easier. Every person can write a post, publicize inappropriate behavior, and shame others. A post on the internet can travel around the world and be shared by millions of users within seconds. Digital technologies make it difficult to keep shaming under control. Thus, it can spread like wildfire, be taken out of context, and develop into defamation, harassment, cyberbullying, and even mass violence against an individual. It can harm individuals who did not violate norms or sanction individuals disproportionately.

In the digital age, forgetting has become the exception and remembering the rule. Online shaming is not ephemeral and is searchable through a simple Google query. It leaves a trail that follows the individual everywhere.

Should the law provide a relief for online shaming? If so, when and how? This Article addresses these questions and aims to provide answers. It focuses on the shaming of ordinary people who are not public figures and are not corporations. It outlines the phenomenon, and addresses shaming’s virtues and flaws. Then it sets forth a taxonomy of three types of shaming: (1) “good shaming”—shaming that is initiated by the court and carried out according to a judicial decision or recommendation; (2) “bad shaming”—shaming an individual by spreading false defamatory rumors, or shaming that got out of control and evolved into defamation or harassment; and (3) “shaming the ugly behavior”—the shaming of a person by private individuals for violating the law, or norms.

This Article focuses on non-ephemeral online shaming. It examines whether search engines should remove links to search results that contain shaming, and if so, when. The Article focuses on the characteristics of digital dissemination that amplify harm to dignitary interests. It explains that the characteristics of the internet and its influences on online expressions can justify new remedies for dissemination of shaming, beyond the traditional remedies for harm that reach the threshold of criminal or tort law.  

The Article overviews the benefits and shortcoming of the “right to be forgotten.” It demonstrates that the benefits and shortcomings are not equally valid in all circumstances. Following this analysis, the Article argues that a dichotomous perspective that chooses between oblivion and permanent memory is inappropriate. This Article makes the case for a differential right to be forgotten that acknowledges nuances of shaming, which outlines nuanced guidelines for delisting links to search results of shaming expressions, depending on the type of shaming.

INTRODUCTION

A Jewish man refused to divorce his wife for four years, barring her from marrying another, and thus rendering her chained.1Under Jewish law, divorce occurs when a husband writes a gett and the wife accepts it. Women who are not given a gett by their husbands are called chained women because they cannot remarry according to Orthodox Jewish law. See Talia Einhorn, Jewish Divorce in the International Arena, in Private Law in the International Arena (Jürgen Basedow et al. eds., 2000). In an unusual move, the Israeli rabbinical court recommended the public to publish his name, photo, and personal details.2See Israeli Rabbinical Court Shames, Excommunicates Man Who Won’t Divorce Wife, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Feb. 19, 2016, 12:57 PM), http://‌www.jta.org/‌2016/‌02/‌19/‌news-opinion/‌israel-middle-east/‌israeli-rabbinical-court-shames-excommunicates-man-who-wont-divorce-wife [https://‌perma.cc/‌6MBW-CZUR]. The man, Oded Guez, was dismissed from his job and excommunicated for not granting the divorce. Id. He escaped to Belgium with a fake passport and continued refusing to unchain his wife. Yaniv Kubovich & Yair Ettinger, Israeli Who Refuses to Grant Wife Divorce Arrested in Belgium for Using Fake Passport, Haaretz (July 28, 2016, 9:28 PM), http://‌www.haaretz.com/‌israel-news/.‌premium-1.734056 [https://‌perma.cc/‌UE56-WGHE]. Later, he filed a petition to the Israeli High Court of Justice (the Israeli Supreme Court). The court concluded that the rabbinical court has the authority to shame a man who leaves his wife chained. See HCJ 5185/13 Anonymous v. The Great Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem (2017) (Isr.) [hereinafter Anonymous v. The High Rabbinical Court]. After Guez continued to chain his wife to the marriage, the Rabbinical Court used a legal procedure to nullify the marriage. See David Sedley, In Rare Move, Rabbinical Court Annuls Marriage of Woman Refused Divorce, Times Isr. (June 18, 2018, 9:55 PM), https://‌www.timesofisrael.com/‌in-rare-move-rabbinical-court-annuls-marriage-of-woman-refused-divorce [https://‌perma.cc/‌9PZ7-6RP3]. The rabbinical court repeated this practice in another case.3Jeremy Sharon, Edelstein Advised He Cannot Ban Divorce Refuser from Knesset, Jerusalem Post (May 24, 2018, 1:30 AM), https://‌www.jpost.com/‌Israel-News/‌Edelstein-advised-he-cannot-ban-divorce-refuser-from-Knesset-558222 [https://‌perma.cc/‌TCP2-LYP5]. After spreading posts on the divorce refuser’s behavior and being briefly jailed, the man, Yaron Attias, agreed to divorce his wife. See Aaron Rabinowitz, After Two Years, Israeli Who Refused to Grant His Wife a Divorce Finally Relents, Haaretz (June 3, 2018, 5:43 PM), https://‌www.haaretz.com/‌israel-news/.‌premium-after-2-years-israeli-who-refused-to-grant-his-wife-a-divorce-relents-1.6139820 [https://‌perma.cc/‌6Q2H-5522].

One day in 2015, a person discovered a defamatory post on Facebook accusing him of racism. Over 6,000 individuals shared the post. Consequently, it went viral and garnered media attention. As a result, he committed suicide.4This is the story of Ariel Ronis, a manager at the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Crossing Authority. See Interior Ministry Official Commits Suicide After Accusation of Racism Goes Viral, Jerusalem Post (May 24, 2015, 2:50 AM), http://‌www.jpost.com/‌Israel-News/Interior-Ministry-official-commits-suicide-after-accusation-of-racism-goes-viral-403924 [https://‌perma.cc/‌8PX9-8LKG].

An Israeli passenger on a flight to Varna verbally attacked a flight attendant during an argument over the purchase of tax-free chocolate. A video documenting the argument was posted on Facebook and went viral.5See Amit Cotler, The Ugliest Kind of Israeli: Passengers Hurl Abuse at Flight Attendant, Ynetnews (Feb. 22, 2015, 11:15 AM), http://‌www.ynet‌news.com/‌articles/‌0,7340,L-4629380,00.html [https://‌perma.cc/‌KF2V-SPH6] (known as the Chocolate Flight).

Shaming is not new; it has existed in different cultures for centuries.6See Daniel J. Solove, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet 91 (2007) (referring to shaming sanctions such as the ancient Romans branding a letter signifying the crime onto the wrongdoer’s forehead); Lauren M. Goldman, Note, Trending Now: The Use of Social Media Websites in Public Shaming Punishments, 52 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 415, 418–19 (2015). In the past, shaming was especially popular for punishing people who were found guilty of minor crimes.7See Kristy Hess & Lisa Waller, The Digital Pillory: Media Shaming of ‘Ordinary’ People for Minor Crimes, 28 Continuum: J. Media & Cultural Stud. 101, 103 (2014). These sanctions had a disciplinary effect because societies were composed of close-knit communities in which people knew each other well. This led to humiliation and deterrence of the wrongdoer. This punishment was efficient because of the familiarity of the community with the offender.8See Goldman, supra note 6, at 419–20 (explaining that without familiarity of the community, public shaming would probably not have been effective). The industrial revolution changed the community. Rapid urbanization allowed people to escape from the sting of shame. Consequently, shaming became less effective. In addition, people started to perceive shaming as too brutal a punishment, and prisons provided an alternative means of castigation.9Id. at 421; see also Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed 48 (2015) (referring to the brutality of this sanction. In some cases, a physical mark was made on the shamed individual); Solove, supra note 6, at 91–92 (referring to urbanization and the rise of prisons).

Shaming has returned. The internet and technological developments created a new “global village.” In the digital age, the scope of shaming is extensive.10See Solove, supra note 6, at 78; Kristine L. Gallardo, Note, Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act, 19 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 721, 725 (2017). Modern technology allows anyone to take out a cell phone, snap a photo, upload it, and tag it. People record others by using internet-connected devices, share the information, and shame them. The internet of things (IoT) allows even greater surveillance and social control than ever before, as sensors in physical objects can passively record and transmit information to cloud storage.11See Mireille Hildebrandt, Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law 41–42 (2015) (expanding on the IoT, the end of dichotomy between online and offline networks, and the rise of “the onlife world”); Andrew Tutt, The Reversibility Principle, 66 Hastings L.J. 1113, 1154 (2015). Shaming can spread like wildfire, by word-of-mouth,12See Karine Nahon & Jeff Hemsley, Going Viral 36 (2013) (defining “word-of-mouth” as flows of information among actors who know each other, engage in mutual activity, or have mutual interests) . copying and imitating posts of other people,13A prominent example of this type of dissemination are “memes.” See Limor Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture 2, 9–15 (2014) (explaining that Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to describe “small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation”); see also Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene 189–201 (1976); Ronald S. Burt, Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion Versus Structural Equivalence, 92 Am. J. Soc. 1287, 1290 (1987) (referring to imitation and stickiness that increase the likelihood of disseminating information). More recently, the term “Internet meme” has been commonly applied to describe the propagation of items such as jokes, rumors, and videos from person to person via the internet. Thus the posts are multiplied and iterated in these posts, and shared norms and values are constructed through cultural artifacts. See An Xiao MINA: Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power 6, 20 (2019) (defining an internet meme as a piece of online media that is shared and remixed over time with the community. “a meme in other words is a unit of culture”), Shifman, supra, at 2, 9–15. or information and reputation cascades that form when individuals follow the statements or actions of their predecessors and do not express their independent opinions.14Informational cascades are formed when individuals follow the statements or actions of predecessors and do not express their opposing opinions because they believe their predecessors are right. As a result, the social network does not obtain important information. Reputational cascades are formed because of social pressures. In these cases, people think they know what is right, or what is likely to be right, but they go along with the crowd in order to maintain their status. See Cass R. Sunstein & Reid Hastie, Four Failures of Deliberating Groups 12–17 (Univ. of Chi., Public Law Working Paper No. 215, 2008). When many people forward or share a post, it might spread beyond their own narrow social network in a short time, going viral.15See Nahon & Hamsley, supra note 12, at 16.

Information that spreads on the internet can reach traditional media outlets that may contextualize it.16See Hess & Waller, supra note 7, at 107–09. For example, traditional media identified the passengers who attacked others on the Chocolate Flight by their names. See Marissa Newman, The Good Israeli and the Ugly Israeli, Times Isr. (Feb. 23, 2015, 2:44 PM), https://‌www.times‌ofisrael.com/‌the-good-israeli-and-the-ugly-israeli [https:/‌/perma.cc/‌C9CJ-YLJZ] (mentioning the name of the husband Koby Ben-Eliyahu); see also Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection 65 (2015) (explaining that journalists are also exposed to shaming on the internet and can report on individuals who violate norms on traditional media). Furthermore, new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, allow contextualization and identification of a shamed individual, thus identifying a person who would otherwise remain anonymous or unknown to the person who first published the post.17Bernard E. Harcourt, Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age 137–40 (2015) (referring to face recognition and contextualization of individuals by new technologies); Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think 194–200 (2011); see also Ryan Calo, Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Primer and Roadmap, 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 399, 421–22 (2017) (explaining that the use of AI machine learning is becoming more prevalent. As a result, everyone in public is likely to be identified through facial recognition). Needless to say, tagging can also be used for shaming.18Sometimes shaming is published on special websites that are devoted to shaming and this may allow contextualization. See Solove, supra note 6, at 86–90 (referring to special websites that are dedicated to shaming bad drivers, lousy tippers in restaurants, men who cheat on their spouses, and other activities). As a result, the audience may figure out who is in a picture. Courts are discovering the virtues of shaming and encourage using the internet for shaming individuals who broke the law, thus identifying violators.19In her Article, Laruen M. Goldman explains that judges utilizing social media for shaming has potential in promoting efficiency; yet carful guidelines for using this tool should set forth in order to prevent inconsistency. See Goldman, supra note 6, at 446. Yet courts are already utilizing social media to support legal sanctions. For example, in 2006, Judge James Kimbler from Ohio posted videos of sentencing hearings on YouTube to shame the criminals and to educate the public. See Anne S.Y. Cheung, Revisiting Privacy and Dignity: Online Shaming in the Global E-Village, 3 Laws 301, 304 (2014); see also Anonymous v. The High Rabbinical Court, supra note 2 (in Israel). Online shaming is not ephemeral. It stays on the internet and remains accessible and searchable through a simple Google query indefinitely.20See Danah Boyd, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens 11 (2014); Daniel J. Solove, Speech, Privacy, and Reputation on the Internet, in The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation 15–19 (Saul Levmore & Martha C. Nussbaum eds., 2010). Furthermore, as the information circulates, it tends to become more damaging because people tend to believe statements they are exposed to often.21See Nicholas DiFonzo & Prashant Bordia, Rumor Psychology: Social And Organizational Approaches 225 (2007); Cass R. Sunstein, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas 25–27 (2014); see also Gordon Pennycook et al., Prior Exposure Increases Perceived Accuracy of Fake News, 147 J. Experimental Psychol. 1865 (2018). In addition, the more times a post is shared, the higher it appears in the list generated by a Google search, and the more users will ascribe it relevance.22See Bing Pan et al., In Google We Trust: Users’ Decisions on Rank, Position, and Relevance, 12 J. Computer-Mediated Comm. 801 (2007). This attracts a greater exposure to the post and leaves a trail that follows the individual everywhere.23See Boyd, supra note 20, at 11–13        ; Silverman, supra note 20, at 168; Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) 20–21 (2011). Furthermore, due to the “negativity bias,” individuals tend to ascribe more weight to negative content in comparison to other types of content.24Due to the negativity bias, bad events, information, or feedback influence us more than good events. Roy F. Baumeister et al., Bad Is Stronger than Good, 5 Rev. Gen. Psychol. 323 (2001); see also Elizabeth A. Kensinger, Negative Emotion Enhances Memory Accuracy: Behavioral and Neuroimaging Evidence, 16 Current Directions Psychol. Sci. 213 (2007). This may result in extensive harm to the individual, infringe on his autonomy, privacy, and sovereignty,25See Shoshana Zuboff ,The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power 54 (2019) (introducing new types of harm of surveillance capitalism, including how tying an individual to the past infringes on “his right to the future tense and the right to sanctuary”). and sanction him disproportionally. Digital shaming raises a variety of questions and challenges that policymakers must address, yet it remains under-explored.

This Article focuses on the shaming of “ordinary people” who are not public figures or celebrities26The Article adopts a narrow definition of “ordinary people” and does not include general public figures or even limited public figures who have voluntarily injected themselves into a particular public controversy, yet it will include involuntary public figures. See Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan, Knight First Amend. Inst. (Oct. 2018), https://‌knightcolumbia.org/‌content/‌facebook-v-sullivan?‌fbclid=‌IwAR22L0‌qaobB8H76‌wn9jVJdcGZ‌vcHktYNRRe‌Vhjdp0CN_‌YKowQrqA‌gBDoHng [https://perma.cc/ASC7-PZ9F] (referring to involuntary public figures in the digital age. In such cases, the privacy and reputational interests should give way to the public interest); Thomas Kadri & Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan: Building Constitutional Law for Online Speech, S. Calif. L. Rev. (forthcoming), https://‌papers.‌ssrn.com/‌sol3/‌papers.cfm?abstract_id=3332530 )manuscript at 20) (referring to contemporary approaches of Facebook regarding public figures and newsworthy information); Michael L. Rustad & Sanna Kulevska, Reconceptualizing the Right to Be Forgotten to Enable Transatlantic Data Flow, 28 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 349, 404 (2015) (explaining that there are general public figures and limited public figures). Policymakers should differentiate between shaming ordinary people and shaming public figures or celebrities. When it comes to celebrities and public figures, the public interest is more extensive, and the justifications for shaming are stronger. In the same manner, U.S. defamation law applies the standard of “actual malice” in defamation claims of public figures and uses the standard for negligence in claims of private people. See N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279–80 (1964); Rustad & Kulevska, supra, at 413; see also Robert C. Post, Data Privacy and Dignitary Privacy: Google Spain, the Right to be Forgotten, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 67 Duke L.J. 981, 1013 n.129 (2018) (“American courts sometimes conclude that persons who have sought to play a role ‘in public life’ waive their right to privacy. ‘A person—who by his accomplishments, fame, or mode of life, or by adopting a profession or calling which gives the public a legitimate interest in his doings, affairs, or character—is said to become a public personage, and thereby relinquishes a part of his right of privacy.’”). and are not corporations.27The considerations regarding shaming are different when it comes to corporations. For example, courts have ruled that corporations have no constitutional rights to privacy. See FCC v. AT&T, 562 U.S. 397, 407–08 (2011); Elizabeth Pollman, A Corporate Right to Privacy, 99 Minn. L. Rev. 27, 88 (2014) (concluding that most corporations should not have a constitutional right to privacy). Similarly, in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 4(1) refers to “natural person,” and this definition does not include corporations. In particular, it deals with shaming done by third parties.28This Article focuses on shaming that was disseminated by third parties, in contrast to a person’s own posts (such as racial jokes) that were disseminated to a wider audience than expected and led to shaming of the person who posted them. See Rustad & Kulevska, supra note 26 (discussing a right to delist from search engines and differentiating between an individual that requests deletion of a post that he published, an individual that requests deletion of a post published by himself in cases of republication and widespread dissemination, and an individual that requests deletion of a post that was published by third parties). Should shaming result in an everlasting “scarlet letter”? Should there be a “right to be forgotten” for individuals who have been shamed? What is the appropriate balance between free speech and autonomy, reputation, and even privacy29In most cases, individuals are shamed for their behavior in the public sphere, and the right to privacy is weaker. See Michael Zimmer, “But the Data Is Already Public”: On the Ethics of Research in Facebook, 12 Ethics & Info. Tech. 313 (2010). Yet the right to privacy also exists in such cases under the rationale of “the right to be let alone.” See Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890). Many scholars criticize the assumption that there is no privacy in public and advocate for a more comprehensive theory of privacy that focuses on enabling participation in social spaces, enabling connections and relationships to form, and enabling identity-making. See Emily B. Laidlaw, Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy, 6 Laws 1 (2017); see, e.g., Woodrow Hartzog, Body Cameras and the Path to Redeem Privacy Law, 96 N.C. L. Rev. 1257, 1290–92 (2018) (“The question of what is public, however, is often just a plot on the spectrum of things that range from completely obscure to totally obvious or known.”); Woodrow Hartzog, Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies 96 (2018) (arguing that there is no dichotomy between private and public; thus, privacy concerns degrees of obscuring); Woodrow Hartzog, The Public Information Fallacy, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 459, 513 (2019) (arguing that there is no clear definition of public information, and the notion of public information is value-laden: “To say something is ‘public’ is to make a value-laden conclusion about what information should be protected and what kinds of surveillance and data practices should be permissible. It is an exercise of power.”). Ari Ezra Waldman, Privacy as Trust: Information Privacy for an Information Age 99 (2018) (explaining that, in the United States, the law does not protect privacy regarding information that was already discovered to other people, and proposing an approach of “privacy as trust” that acknowledges nuances of privacy). Today, it is easier to access public information, and commercial stakeholders can collect information and form digital dossiers. See Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life 89–98 (2010); Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, To Read or Not to Read: Privacy Within Social Networks, the Entitlement of Employees to a Virtual “Private Zone,” and the Balloon Theory, 64 Am. U. L. Rev. 53, 83 (2014) (arguing that, in the digital era, a private zone in the public sphere is highly important). Moreover, empirical studies discovered that the ease of accessibility of information in the public sphere does not drive judgments of appropriateness of its dissemination, and reasonable expectations of privacy can exist for public records. Therefore, assessments of privacy should be more nuanced. See Kirsten Martin & Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy Interests in Public Records: An Empirical Investigation, 31 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 111 (2017). of the shamed individual? This Article deals with these questions and aims to provide answers. It offers a comprehensive framework for applying a right to be forgotten to online shaming posts that can be used by judges and policymakers. Keeping these goals in mind, this Article is divided into five parts.

Part I conceptualizes digital shaming. Due to the special properties of digital dissemination, shaming will be defined broadly as publishing and disseminating speech that causes dignitary harm to a person and humiliates him. This definition is not limited to the traditional definition of shaming. It encompasses, under the umbrella of shaming, different types of expressions. Some of them are forbidden according to the law, while others are legitimate. Yet all the types of speech under the umbrella of shaming result in dignitary harm. Following this conceptualization, the Article explores the virtues and flaws of shaming.

Part II offers a descriptive taxonomy of shaming and identifies three main categories: (1) “good shaming”—when the authority to shame is drawn from the law (following a court order or a judicial recommendation); (2) “bad shaming”—when falsehoods and defamation are published,30This could happen even when the original statement is true, but, in the course of dissemination, users supplement it with falsehoods or the information is taken out of context. or when harmful content is disseminated without a legitimate purpose and in cases of harassment;31Examples of this include spreading non-consensual intimate pictures in order to inflict emotional harm or charge money from the victim for its removal, or shaming a person for his appearance, race, or gender. Such posts have no legitimate purpose of enforcing social norms; they only aim to harm others. and (3) “shaming the ugly behavior”—when violation of the law or norms are published.32For example, shaming uncivil behavior that diverts from social norms. This Part argues that the arguments in favor and against shaming do not equally apply for all types of shaming. Furthermore, certain types of shaming are inherently wrong. Re-conceptualizing shaming and mapping central types of shaming allow better understanding of this phenomenon.

Part III explores the legal and extra-legal approaches for confronting negative outcomes of shaming and addresses their limitations.

Part IV explores situations in which the law regulates the removal of certain records from databases. It also overviews the laws in the European Union and the United States on delisting links from search engine results. Following this, it explains that the digital age changed the characteristics of dissemination. It argues that the scope of dissemination, the ability to find information, and the access to information via search engines at a later stage justify a new approach towards protected dignitary interests outside the traditional categories of protected interests in civil and criminal law. It proposes that the law should recognize dignitary harm even when the dissemination is not a tort or a crime. Delisting links to shaming information is an important step in restoring the balance between memory and oblivion in the digital era. Finally, this Part examines normative considerations on the right to be forgotten.

Part V argues that the law should acknowledge different shades of forgetting and not rely on a forgetting-remembering dichotomy. It proposes a nuanced approach towards oblivion and outlines differential guidelines for delisting shaming information.

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