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Facebook app icon on a smartphone: "more accountable"
Photo: Mohssen Assanimoghaddam / dpa
According to a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), Facebook has to accept that users who have been registered on the platform for a long time use pseudonyms.
An obligation to use the so-called real name is invalid, the third civil senate decided on Thursday in Karlsruhe (Az. III ZR 3/21 and others).
Although the plaintiffs must provide the company with their real names, they may appear under a pseudonym within the network.
Because the legal situation changed after the start of the legal dispute, the judgment only applies to old cases.
The current Facebook Terms of Use state, among other things, that users should use the same name that they use in everyday life.
The rule is intended to raise the inhibition threshold for hate speech and bullying.
"When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable," says Facebook's Terms of Service.
The plaintiff and the plaintiff, however, had used fantasy names.
Facebook had asked them in vain to change them to real names.
In 2018, the company suspended the two's accounts.
The Munich Higher Regional Court, which recently ruled on the lawsuits, agreed with Facebook.
The plaintiff and the plaintiff appealed.
Judgment according to the old law
The Federal Supreme Court has now largely upheld the revisions.
Facebook's real name requirement from April 2018 put the plaintiff at an unreasonable disadvantage, he ruled.
The regulation on the obligation to provide names and dates, which the woman had accepted in 2015, is ineffective anyway.
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Because the third civil senate of the BGH did not take the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into account in its judgments on the two cases, these do not apply to all Facebook users.
As the presiding judge Ulrich Herrmann explained in Karlsruhe, the GDPR only came into force on May 25, 2018, which is why it did not have to be taken into account in the specific cases dealt with.
The two plaintiffs from Bavaria had previously joined Facebook.
The BGH decided the current judgment according to the German Telemedia Act in the version valid until the end of November 2021.
It states that pseudonyms must be permitted »as far as this is technically possible and reasonable«.
However, this decision is limited to old cases, Herrmann explained.
There is no such provision in the General Data Protection Regulation.
Users who have accepted the same general terms and conditions as the two suing Bavarians could benefit from the judgments - newer users not.
mak/dpa/AFP
