Gisela Perez de Acha Power structures tend to take control over
narratives. It happened during the harsher periods of Latin
American dictatorships, and it could happen with Google. As the
biggest search engine in the world, Google is not only a company,
it is a synonym of knowledge, controlling the biggest share of the
search engine market. It is where we go when we don't know
something. Where we empty our every day thoughts. Even the way
information is ordered and presented has a direct impact on our
perception of facts, and therefore on our ideology. How Google
crawls, indexes and presents information is not a neutral matter.
What we get as search results has been tailored and programmed into
the algorithm, that obeys over 200 criteria that are well beyond
"organic". We don't quite know how the algorithms work, and yet
that process has consequences in terms of our collective memory,
the definition of history, and also in terms of our own identity.
We need to start questioning the search engine. First, because we
socially have "blind faith" in the results. We take them as
reality, and as a parameter of "truth". They are unquestionable.
Second, because under the paradigm of this faith, Google has built
a hegemonic and centralized information system and this is what
impacts the construction of history. If Google "removes" something
from its database, or simply fails to include it, an informational
hole is generated that is more directly related to the company's
monopoly than to the very nature of the information on the
Internet. Finally, taking both things into consideration, when
Google indexes information about a person, it generates a deep
identity conflict: it is more true and true what the searcher says
to what a person feels, experiences and believes in her life.
Beyond the right to be forgotten, delisting is a proper tool to
question Google's online hegemonic narrative and take control of
our online identity. We aim to present an analysis of the culture
of memory and oblivion in Latin America related to delisting, with
concrete public policy proposals that range from cases where
delisting should always be possible, to cases where it must be
absolutely banned. If digital colonialism implies the creations and
exportation of "truths", delisting is a tool that can provide us
with possibilities to erode intermediary power structures.
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