“The use of authentic names on Facebook protects people’s privacy and safety by ensuring people know who they’re sharing and connecting with”, a Facebook representative reportedly said.
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The Hamburg watchdog, which regulates the social network in Germany, said making users sign up under their real names violated an individual’s privacy rights.
Facebook replied it was disappointed with the order and that German courts had reviewed their policy on many occasions and deemed it compliant with EU law.
‘Facebook should immediately stop its “real name” policy that pushes trans and gender variant people out of the net for alleged identity fraud.’.
“Anyone who stands on our pitch also has to play our game”, Caspar said, according to Bloomberg.
The Hamburg data protection authority, which regulates Facebook in Germany, has ruled the service can’t force Germans to use their real names. This is due to a 2011 audit that ruled it was justified because it prevented Internet harassment and encouraged child safety.
The policy hit the headlines again in June after Zip, a trans former Facebook employee who was instrumental in introducing the company’s custom gender feature, was required to “prove” her name to the company – the same name that had been on her name badge while she worked for Facebook.
The woman insisted that she had used a nickname so that she wouldn’t be contacted for business purposes through her personal Facebook account.
Facebook continues to claim that as its European headquarters are in Ireland it should only abide by Irish law in Europe and has therefore rejected the jurisdiction of other national authorities.
“Having chosen its policy, Facebook has to enforce it. And because its policy attempts to hammer the reality of names into a constrained model they end up having to make a trade-off in the edge cases”.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1.39 billion monthly active users.
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Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, stated that it was never intended for people to be constrained to use their legal name, however, in the spirit of this social media’s policies, it would be advisable that everyone use their authentic name.
