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by marknutter 4931 days ago
But Facebook doesn't enforce their real name policy. And I don't think they need to. Most people willingly give their real names if you make that the only option for signing up for the service.

If you block Germany it's tantamount to censorship. Perhaps people in Germany are less concerned about censorship than we are here in the States, but I'd have to imagine it would roughly at least some feathers.

1 comments

I - fail to follow.

You don't see a reason to enforce the real name policy, but are opposed to a ruling/request to be explicit about that?

Censorship is always a tough subject. For one, because I actually think that 'free speech' in the US sense doesn't apply locally (there are quite some things you cannot state/show/do and I tend to like that. But I wouldn't consider myself pro-censorship. On the contrary, even).

Ignoring that: Why is 'blocking German users from using the service' censorship and evil, but 'blocking everyone from using a name that they'd like to use, potentially locking/deleting their account after requesting people to hand out official, government provided IDs to a random company on the internet' not censorship?

For me? Same thing. In both cases it's the company that acts and blocks/"censors" a number of potential users.