Trilema burns.
Four years ago give or take I wrote an article (Calea spre idiotenie, The Path to Idiocy) about some Romanian nobody (one Lorand R. Minyo) and some two bit local hoster (Webfactor - a hearty contender in the "first best greatest" nooby league). That article makes some on point comments, which are met with the usual empty posturing. Exactly like it works out in Bitcoin, incidentally, for the very good reason that hollow posturing, poor people and derpitude aren't in any way specific to Romania.
At any rate, there's hundreds of these executions scattered all over Trilema, and who cares ?
Well, "nobody cares", until the idiot in question discovers that Trilema ranks, and people take it seriously. At which point the reaction comes, always in the same tired manner : that the marks of his idiocy in the world should be erased. Yes, just like that. What, problem ? Not like this Internet thing is really real! Why shouldn't he be able to alter it! He's already lied about his own personal history, and if he's able to "alter the past" why should he be denied altering the public record ?! He's a people too, somehow, magicallyi, and what is this unfair anti-equalitarian thing where the marks of his idiocy are used to discriminate against him, and costing him jobs and promotions and customers and self esteem ?!
In which spirit, Google writes to me! With pretty much all the forms of a tired old teacher forced by idiots to support other idiots in their idiocy, against his better judgement and all reason, because idiots stick together like shit sticks together. It reads :
Hello,
Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, we are no longer able to show one or more pages from your site in our search results in response to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.
These pages have not been blocked entirely from our search results, and will continue to appear for queries other than those specified by individuals in the European data protection law requests we have honored. Unfortunately, due to individual privacy concerns, we are not able to disclose which queries have been affected.
Please note that in many cases, the affected queries do not relate to the name of any person mentioned prominently on the page. For example, in some cases, the name may appear only in a comment section.
If you believe Google should be aware of additional information regarding this content that might result in a reversal or other change to this removal action, you can use our form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/eu-privacy-webmaster. Please note that we can't guarantee responses to submissions to that form.
The following URLs have been affected by this action:
http://trilema.com/calea-spre-idiotenie
Regards,
The Google Team
The only result of this being that I was enticed to try and search, which attempt delivered exactly the expected results : that page (and in all likeliness a sensible increase in the monthly volume of searches for the guy's name). Apparently the EU is about as impotent in practice as its fame for impotence promises in theory. Nevertheless, it still strikes me as beyond incomprehensible that someone, somewhere actually thought this is not a good idea, but an idea at all - that somehow people not liking what other people are writing may have any say whatsoever in the matter.
So in conclusion... 1) Trilema burns ; 2) Idiots don't change, nor do they substantially differ from one another ; 3) Assemblages of idiots such as states etc are not as effective as the idiots composing them taken separately, but less effective - generally significantly less effective. Unsurprisingly enough.
———- No, I don't agree stupid people are people too, just like me and you. They may be people too just like you, if you wish, but they can't be people too just like me. Because I say so. End of story. [↩]
