Politics in digital space - Lisbon

Invited by prof. Jaume Valentines-Álvarez for the course Politics in Digital Society - in the frame of the Master in Digital Society - Nova University Lisbon, a lecture about the politics in contemporary digital space - the case for "abusing the abuse"

The right to be forgotten is a quite relevant piece of regulation. People can ask the removal of abusive content from the Web and the Internet, or simply ask to be forgotten. But how does this digital forgetfulness procedure work? We will present the case for "abusing the abuse", a "practice that fake DMCA and GDPR are abused to hinder the freedom of the press when investigating corruption or abuses of power". Submitting a fake abuse is very easy, e.g. to global CDN systems. Hosting providers automatically take into account them, fearing their IP's - their valuable assets - become blacklisted. The Politics of digital space are increasingly shaped by a growing number of global companies exploiting the abuse system. These companies pervert the right to be forgotten into a weapon for censorship, claiming to defend their customers' online reputation.