Have you ever wondered what would happen if you wanted to suddenly disappear from the internet forever? If you haven’t you might want to think about it, because in Meg Leta Jones’ 2016 book “Ctrl+Z: The Right to Be Forgotten”, she talks about how this problem is about to become a lot more prevalent.

Jones is a professor at Georgetown University, where she specializes in the relationship between culture and communication, as well as the ethical and legal issues surrounding online communication. She is also affiliated with the Institute for Technology Law & Policy at Georgetown Law Center, where she helps with researching privacy in the digital age.

Based on the premise that individuals should be allowed to have a say in what personal information is allowed to remain online and how it’s contextualized, the book covers the legal and philosophical precedent surrounding the issue. One of the key pieces of legislation Jones references is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation Article 17, which denotes a variety of circumstances that would entitle someone to force search engines to delete their personal information. She also discusses the challenges to this concept and the ways in which large media conglomerates could actually weaponize this idea against individuals.

In the latest episode of Will Reviews Books , I talk about this thought provoking book and what I thought of it. I also touch on its themes and some of my favorite parts of the book. One of the aspects I cover in the episode is the ways in which the right to be forgotten will become an even greater concern as technology advances and inevitably becomes more invasive.

Listen to this newest episode of Will Reviews Books and any future episodes at the link below.