Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Facebook users who registered accounts under an alias before 2018 should be allowed to keep them despite the social network's rules
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2022) Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Facebook users who registered accounts under an alias before 2018 should be allowed to keep them despite the social network's rules.
The 3rd Civil Senate chamber partially backed a challenge against the rule, saying "the defendant is ordered to tolerate the changing of the plaintiff's profile name to a pseudonym and allow the plaintiff access to the functions of their account under the chosen profile name."
Two Germans sued Facebook for suspending their accounts in early 2018 after they failed to prove their user Names were authentic. The social network's naming rules ask everyone "to use the same name on Facebook that they use in everyday life" to prevent hate speech and bullying.
A Munich regional court sided with the social media giant in 2018 on the grounds that a German regulation that required telemedia to allow anonymity where possible was made obsolete by the EU data protection law of May 2018 that made no reference to this requirement.
But the top German court in Karlsruhe overturned that ruling, arguing that the national law clause was in effect when the accounts were created under aliases. Lead judge Ulrich Herrmann said that "the immediate reach of the decision is therefore limited to old cases," as quoted by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
