No. That’s a narrow view, even from a libertarian perspective. Self ownership includes having a say in how your identity is defined. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago. If an archive permanently and prominently links something I said back then to who I am today, it assigns me an identity I may have moved on from. No operator or relay provider has the right to freeze my opinion in time indefinitely. What if I only agreed to something for a limited time, but the relays didn’t let me set that kind of term in the agreement?
Before the internet, forgetting was the default. Memories faded, documents got lost, and so on. Forgetting was never a privilege. It was simply a normal part of social life. So the right to be forgotten doesn’t invent anything new. It just restores the status quo we had before. Citizens whose every action can be traced forever are a tool for concentrating power, no matter who holds it. Anyone who can track everyone for decades and bring up things they said years ago has leverage over you. That’s not a free society. It’s a digital glass house. A world where no mistake or out of context remark ever disappears should be a nightmare for everyone.
You say you’re a libertarian. A free market depends on being able to leave. A market you can’t exit, including when it comes to your data, isn’t a market. It’s a trap. Networks that make deletion difficult create exactly that kind of trap. It’s like living in a city you’re not allowed to move away from.
Before the internet, forgetting was the default. Memories faded, documents got lost, and so on. Forgetting was never a privilege. It was simply a normal part of social life. So the right to be forgotten doesn’t invent anything new. It just restores the status quo we had before. Citizens whose every action can be traced forever are a tool for concentrating power, no matter who holds it. Anyone who can track everyone for decades and bring up things they said years ago has leverage over you. That’s not a free society. It’s a digital glass house. A world where no mistake or out of context remark ever disappears should be a nightmare for everyone.
You say you’re a libertarian. A free market depends on being able to leave. A market you can’t exit, including when it comes to your data, isn’t a market. It’s a trap. Networks that make deletion difficult create exactly that kind of trap. It’s like living in a city you’re not allowed to move away from.