Facebook has been battling users who either don’t exist in real life or are using a pseudonym, but the company has met resistance in Germany. However, a judge ruled Wednesday in an appeal case that German privacy laws (which would allow users to have whatever name they want on the social network) do not apply to Facebook, as the company’s European base is in Ireland, where regulations are more lax.
Lisa Raphael (left), the social media producer at Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie, is one of our featured speakers in Mediabistro's upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online event and workshop starting June 6, 2013. Lisa will share a case study on how the hit show uses Twitter to build interest and buzz around upcoming segments. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
The Facebook Public Policy Office in Berlin has likely been in overdrive due to the social network’s ongoing conflict with the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein over whether Facebook users should be allowed to use pseudonyms, but staffers in Berlin welcomed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Tuesday, and Kerry signed the office’s wall.
Facebook’s good fortune in courtrooms extended overseas, as the administrative court for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein sided with the social network and suspended the enforcement of an order that it allow users to register under pseudonyms.
The data-protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, took his campaign against Facebook’s insistence that users provide their real names up a notch, threatening to fine the social network £16,000 ($20,877) if it refuses to abolish that policy.
Facebook and Germany are at odds again, this time over whether the social network’s insistence that users provide their real names conflicts with the country’s data-protection law that permits the use of pseudonyms.
