Who Owns My Digital Identity

I want to ask you something simple. If tomorrow morning someone searches your name on Google, what will they see? Is it what you want them to see? And if not, what can you do about it?

The short answer is: less than you think.

The Moment I Realized Something Was Broken

Some time ago I sat and thought about a question that sounds simple, but the more I dug into it, the more I realized it's much more complex than it seems. Here's the question: What's the difference between a kindergarten child who can't be photographed and an adult who was filmed at their professional lecture in 2015?

The law protects the child hermetically. Parental consent is required, personal phones can't be used, nothing can be uploaded without explicit consent. The reason is simple - a child can't imagine what will happen to their photo in twenty years.

But what about the adult? They consented. They stood in front of an audience and said "yes, film me" - so everything's fine, right?

Not exactly.

They consented to the world that existed in 2015. A world where a recording is stored on YouTube and people can watch it. They didn't consent to the world of 2025, where an AI system can train itself on their voice, their knowledge, their style, and then create a digital version of them that speaks, advises and sells without paying them a shekel and without asking them.

The consent you gave in the old world isn't valid in the new world. And that's a huge breach that no one has closed yet.

The Shake That Can't Be Undone

To understand why it's so hard to protect yourself today, you need to understand how artificial intelligence works.

When an AI system is trained, it "swallows" billions of texts from the web. Articles, interviews, posts, recordings. All this information isn't stored as separate files that can be deleted. It merges into the digital brain in a way that's like a shake. Once you put strawberry, banana and melon into a blender, you can't take the strawberry back out. You can throw away the whole shake and start over. But rebuilding an AI system costs hundreds of millions of dollars. No company will do that because of one person's deletion request.

The Europeans enacted the EU AI Act which says people can demand deletion of their information from such systems. But the only technical solution doesn't exist yet. So there's a law that can't be enforced. Fines are paid, the shake remains.

And in Israel? There isn't even that law.

When the Pipe Becomes Responsible

Platforms like Google and YouTube have always claimed they're just a "pipe." They're not responsible for what's uploaded to them, just like a phone company isn't responsible for what you say in a call.

But there's a moment when the pipe becomes responsible. Pornhub learned this the hard way. A court ruled that once company employees added tags, titles and categories to content to attract more viewers and sell ads - they're no longer a "pipe." They're active editors profiting from the content.

Google does exactly the same thing. Its algorithm chooses what to display first, what to recommend, what to rank high. It doesn't just store - it edits and promotes. The question of if and when an Israeli court will reach the same conclusion is still completely open.

Your Name Is Your Brand - But the Law Doesn't Know That

In an era where everyone needs to market themselves, the line between freelancer and employee has almost disappeared. Doctor, programmer, consultant, therapist - all build profiles, showcase achievements, manage digital reputation. Their name is their brand.

But the law still lives in the old world. It protects registered trademarks, logos, commercial marks. Someone with an invoice is more protected than someone with a payslip. And if someone builds negative "digital real estate" on your name - buys domains, publishes articles that put you at the top of search results - Israeli law gives you very few tools to deal with it.

So What Do We Do?

I don't have easy answers. But I have one question I think everyone should ask themselves:

Do I control what people see when they search for me?

Because if not - someone else controls it. And that could be Google, could be an old website, could be an AI system that learned things about you that you didn't even know it knew.

Your digital identity is the most important asset you have today. It's time to start treating it as such.