Most people know Article 17 GDPR as ‘the right to be forgotten’, but that’s not its real name. It's actually called 'Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’)’. The fact that this name appears to predominantly focus on ‘erasing', makes sense, according to Paulan Korenhof from the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science, because it’s impossible to force people to forget something by implementing a law — which is why 'forgetting' would not suit the substance and potential of the right. Despite this renewed focus and clarification, this relatively new right remains somewhat ambiguous. That’s why, according to Korenhof, we should think creatively about finding ways to employ the right to secure human autonomy and digital representations online, while simultaneously taking the importance of things like 'freedom of expression and information’ into account. In practice, this might entail that we should, for instance, only erase some details of an undesirable fragment of online information or edit its context, instead of erasing the entire fragment.

Paulan Korenhof on Article 17 GDPR and digital representations