—Meg Leta Jones
A few weeks ago the Internet became very upset about Peeple, or “Yelp for people.” Co-founder Julia Cordray explained to the Washington Post, “People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of decisions. Why not do the same kind of research on other aspects of life?”
Why not do the same kind of research that we do on cars on people?
Peeple’s future is not looking bright, but assume that Yelp for humans develops in one form another in the future. Should people be able to edit others’ entries? Yelp would be entirely useless if companies could edit user comments, though reliability is certainly questionable. It would be strange if car manufacturers were able to edit the Kelley Blue Book rating?
People find it offensive to be equated to cars. So offensive that we have laws that distinguish the treatment of people from the treatment of cars. For instance, you will get in less trouble for kicking a car than a person. But, should the law distinguish between people and cars online, where it is all just bits?
More and more countries are extending special treatment to humans as they exist online through data protection rights like the right to be forgotten. The U.S. is not one of them, a distinction that is part of a growing rift between America and Europe. In Ctrl+Z, the nitty gritty details of this ongoing, complicated debate are hashed out, organized, and analyzed in a global context.
Meg Leta Jones is an assistant professor in Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture & Technology department where she researches and teaches in the area of technology law and policy. Her book, Ctrl+Z: The Right to be Forgotten, will be published in May 2016 by NYU Press.
