There are no easy answers to any of these issues, but one thing is all but certain: throwing out everything our societies have learned over centuries about defending private lives and allowing people to move on from mistakes, just because a few Internet companies who have made staggering amounts of money might lose some of it if their business models were modestly inconvenienced, is not the only possible or potentially desirable way forward.
There are never any easy answers, but one thing is certain, this issue is not constrained to a few internet companies.
* Credit Reporting Bureaus (Callcredit, Equifax, Experian, CEG, Shufa)
* Educational institutions (and other information held by other Credential verification organizations)
* Background checks for Employment (including criminal and citizenship checks in the USA)
It's not clear that privacy principles are generally respected or even tolerated in these areas and mistakes you may have made often carry on for a very long time in many areas. One thing that society has learned over centuries is that when it comes to people, history is often a leading indicator of future behavior.
Depending on the current regimes influencing your life, you may or may not have a *right* to limit access to your history, but that does not reduce the value of that history to people that you interact with. Because of this inherent conflict of interest, there will likely never be a correct answer to this, only what we collectively agree (or disagree) about.
People have studied this type of thing in game theory (e.g., the Tit-for-tat). Many experiments and models suggest that the better outcomes happen if we forgive, but do not forget. In my opinion mostly these laws simply attempt to coerce forgiving behavior on the unwilling people by forcing them to forget. I'm not sure this is the best reductive way get the desired result.