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They can decide all that, but that doesn't give them clear jurisdiction to actually enforce it. They can penalise users doing it, possibly by making it a breach of the terms of carrying a drivers license to use it for this purpose, although it's not clear how they'd prove such usage.

Alternatively, they can try to hit Facebook's ad sales in Germany, but that's likely to run into common market rules around trade barriers.

Anyway, does Facebook actually enforce this? I have never shown any ID to Facebook, and I see plenty of people not using their real names (typically they use derivatives or add a screenname as a middle name, rather than being totally pseudonymous).



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They can issue a court order, and if Facebook were to go full "freemen of the land" and try to ignore it there's always the European Arrest Warrant.

"Does facebook actually enforce this?" .... The answer to this question is a loud "yes". The harderst hit groups I've found are transgender folks and occultists. As far as being pagan/occultist, many prefer to keep a seperate account for their religious lives, partially because many live in places where they would be persecuted. In addition, many have a magical name that is part of their chosen religion, that they prefer to be addressed by in such circles.

The result of the real name policy, outside of taking away individual privacy, has been the shutting down of accounts, forcing people to provide identifacation, phone numbers, etc, to prove you are you, and insisting that the name matches the legal name. Some people never really seem to be able to unlock the original account (or don't want to give facebook ID)


Facebook completely enforces this, but only acts on profiles that are reported to them.

Around a year ago, many of my friends were in a "Gay Pride 2014 parade" group. Over two or three days, everyone in that group with a fake-looking name was reported. A little later, everyone who had 'liked' a local gay nightclub page was reported.

The obvious conclusion was someone with an agenda was searching particular groups for people to report.


This is another example of a theoretically neutral policy being used to enable harrasment, because it's not applied in a uniform manner.

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