Every time I try to google local well-known fraudsters in the UK, where even the news article itself mentions previous well-reported scandals, all searches with the name of the guy will only return the google message about records having been hidden because of that. It's just insane. It's like walking into a library, pulling up a newspaper collection from 2001, and when you reach a certain day, all pages are censored or ripped out. How is that not utterly dystopic...?

I agree that youth should be a special case, but in the general term it's just a Bad Idea imho. It's the actual Memory Hole, and not even in ironic terms.

You're absolutely right to see a problem here, but the opposite is also true. Like with so many things now, the negative impact of some actions was mitigated in the past by the high cost (or effort) required to perform that action. It was still possible, but unfeasible in practice for all but the most committed. When the cost is reduced, suddenly the mitigation is no longer there, and thus the negative impacts become a lot more prevalent.