Great article 😄 And a great perspective on this area.

An interesting counterpoint to the idea of Damnatio Memoriae is where people want to do this voluntarily. This is actually something that is quite difficult to do. I recently attempted to erase as much of my online presence as possible and discovered, predictably, that it depended entirely on the cooperation of the data stores' operators.

Essentially it is the Right to be Forgotten. For ordinary Joes and Janes this perhaps more important than being remembered, because there's so much information that we leave "lying around", plus the more voluminous stores of information collected about us by first and third parties.

Perhaps the real analogy then is that one can lose the ability to affect what exists about themselves online. For example, hackers often seem to get punishments restricting, perhaps completely forbidding, their use of the Internet. This is more or less in line with the vast oversight of which you refer I think.

This is certainly even more of a problem with permanent blockchain technology. There is a kind of hypothetical story that goes around of posting drunken photos on Facebook and wanting them removed because of professional embarrassment at some later date when one is older and wiser. That's why for really personal information, I'm more in favor of a yet to be developed system where one is explicitly asked for permission to use identifying information, and this permission can be revoked at any time.

So the compromise solution then becomes the right to alias or anonymity, which is the fundamental driver of the Right to Be Forgotten. Case in point, @personz on Steemit!