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Most people would agree that what you do as a child shouldn't be held against you as an adult, provided you've learned from your mistake. I'd say that what happened to you is a perversion of justice.

You've paired your sense of helplessness with a need for divine perfection to reason away the purpose behind the right to be forgotten.

There are people who have been faced with injustice, who haven't succumbed to letting it affect them forever. There are people who have paid their debt to society and shouldn't have that perpetually held against them.

> Despite the fact that, in theory, the right to be forgotten would benefit me greatly, I think it needs to go. It's a complete waste of resources because it can never be effectively enforced.

There is no law that is completely, effectively enforced. Laws against murder aren't effectively enforced, murder still happens all of the time. However, laws allow public action to be taken and give recourse to victims.

> no way I could get every search engine to comply

There are a handful of search engines people use. If Google alone complied, that would probably eliminate 90% of anyone who would ever search for you online.

> Ultimately, I've come to terms with the fact that my history isn't too much of a bad thing. If someone doesn't want to do business with me because of it, then I've just filtered out someone with superficial prejudices.

In a way, you have the privilege of being able to filter out opportunities. A few words in someone's history can effectively bar them from being hired or finding a place to live, leaving them with little to no opportunity. About a week ago, there was a post by an HN member about such a situation [1].

In the end, bills need to be paid and people need to eat. If someone has dependents, like the guy above [1], they will suffer.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16708224



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