This is ridiculous. If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them. It's clear people like those services. The biggest appeal of Facebook is that you can connect with people from your past by typing their names into search or being connected to them through your current FB friends. If half the people on FB have pseudonyms it will make the process of reconnecting with old friends and family frustrating to the point of uselessness.
>If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them
Except Facebook has a monopoly, minors are using it, and so on. Face it, in Europe we have a different understanding of the role of the State and if you want to do business in here, you'll have to abide by our rules.
they do. studivz plays ther same role os/2 and or anything else played in the microsoft monopoly era. they are at this point a niche site that is almost dead.
"StudiVZ" was a lame (and, if I remember correctly, bit-by-bit when they started) clone of FB, which won here for a while. Probably because they actually had a local interface and added local universities, schools and whatnot. Since then FB expanded to Germany, StudiVZ is for all purposes dead and obsolete.
I don't even know how you come up with that example. It's like pointing to Myspace or whatever came before that.
Both StudiVZ and MySpace are examples of how Facebook isn't a monopoly. So is Twitter and e-mail and Google Plus. And PHPBB and Diaspora.
Facebook has a monopoly on being Facebook. For everything else, there's ample competition. The fact that Facebook is more popular than the competition doesn't make it a monopoly.
Would you consider Windows as a monopoly? There are alternatives.. If your answer is 'No', the EU seems to disagree with you (and might on the FB case, we'll see). If your answer is 'Yes', where's the difference?
Windows is more of a monopoly in the sense that there is much heavier lock-in: It's not trivial to write an application in such a way that it works equally well under Windows and the alternatives. The lock-in to Facebook is much, much lighter.
But more importantly, being a monopoly (however such is defined) is not in itself illegal, and it's not a carte blanche for publicity-hungry politicians to hand-wavily demand to control random details of a company's operations.
What is illegal is monopolistic behaviour, to leverage your dominance in one market to unfairly gain an advantage in another. That is what Microsoft did and was punished for (rather than merely being a monopoly), and what Google might be getting in trouble for.
WHAT? Pardon, but I don't see at all how you could come to such a conclusion. The primary assets of Windows are: ease-of-use, ubiquity, hardware compatibility. But if you have an application you love that works on Windows, chances are (if it's not a game, but even then there are other games and entertainment software) that there is a port or clone for another system (like Linux or Mac OS X — I'm speaking consumer-grade stuff here, business is another matter entirely.)
Facebook on the other hand has these assets: your Mom's on Facebook, your dad's on Facebook, so is your neighbour, your aunt, all your friends, (ex-)class mates, acquaintances, that boy or girl you had a crush on in first grade…
Your social graph is much more difficult to migrate to a different social platform than it is to port an application from one OS to another (or to find it on the Net.) Because it is pretty much impossible. Mass-migrations sort-of happen (like StudiVZ → Facebook a while back in Germany, or Digg → reddit, but there the social cohesion was rather low,) but only in high pressure situations. You can't easily bring about such a situation without the point of origin of said migration fucking up in a major way.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr — they're all sitting on social gold, and they're keeping it for now.
Monopoly means that there is only a single seller of a given commodity.
Windows was a monopoly in the 1990s and until I guess around when OS X came out - these alternative applications you mention didn't exist yet. Today I wouldn't say Windows is a monopoly, partly because good-enough alternative applications exists, partly because many (most) new, fancy applications are web-based and not limited to IE (as they once were). Today, really, there is really only one reason to run Windows, and it's Office - and that's going away fast, especially as users dawn on the fact that they can communicate without e-mailing Word documents around.
Another important component of Windows monopoly is exclusivity. Today I can trivially run Windows in a VM for that fraction of my workflow that isn't properly supported on Mac or Linux - 10 years ago, the best you could do was dual booting, which was painful and tricky for non-technical users.
Which brings me to Facebook: No, you can't port your social network lock, stock and barrel to a competing service. But you can trivially, with very little friction, maintain your presence on multiple networks - all you need is another tab in your browser, or a client app that supports each. You can even use the APIs of the respective services to integrate them with each other - you can automatically post Tweets to Facebook and vise versa. Plenty of people I know use both Facebook and Twitter in parallel with various degrees of automated integration. That's not the face of a monopoly.
The fact that other people don't want to stop using Facebook does not make Facebook a monopoly. They have strong network effects, yes, but that's not the same.
There is no consensus in Europe that the role of government includes protecting us against our own deliberate choices. Particularly not against choices that we can reverse any time we want. And the law we're talking about is not a European law. It's a German law.
I'm glad we do have a European law that mandates websites to delete personal data at the request of users. That gives us the freedom to leave if we no longer agree with the rules a website makes.
I actually deleted my Facebook account partly because they asked "friends" to report "friends" who didn't use their real name. I also don't like to be mislead and spied upon in the most egregious ways possible.
Facebook is only a monopoly if all my friends decide to enforce it by keeping me out of the loop if I'm not on Facebook. Real friends don't do that.
I'm glad we do have a European law that mandates websites to delete personal data at the request of users.
No, that law hasn't come in yet. It's planned to come in. Current EU data protection law requires that companies delete/correct data that's incorrect, and they can only store information if it's proportionate to what they're doing, and if you've consented at the start. But as ar as I know, EU law/directives does not allow you (yet!) to be "forgotten".
It's not the same as a right to be forgotten, but it does say companies need to think about (and presumably be prepared to argue in court) their need for data.
> In some cases, you may need to keep personal data so you can defend possible future legal claims. However, you could still delete information that could not possibly be relevant to such a claim. Unless there is some other reason for keeping it, personal data should be deleted when such a claim could no longer arise.
If you dig into definition of monopoly, you'll be surprised that everybody has a monopoly on themselves. Important thing is that Facebook does not have monopoly on you, but your government does. If monopoly is evil, then deal with your government first. If it is not, then why worry about Facebook?
It might have escaped your notice, but a lot of people over the past few thousand years have worried about the power of governments, and a lot of effort has been expended in trying to limit this power through laws.
Any time you have an uneven distribution of power, be it a government or a corporate monopoly, you need to have some safeguards in place to ensure that power is not abused.
@RickHull
Please don't confuse a state with its government.
Ignoring the military, only 1 of the 3 separated powers is allowed to use violence.
That aside.
There's a huge difference between a company and a government. Because I only get to decide on the politics of the latter. But luckily my government has jurisdiction over companies operating in the country in question, giving me also some power over them.
So. To make this clear:
A government having control over people without the people having control over it: A potential problem.
A company having a monopoly and therefore control over people without the people having control over it: A potential problem.
Luckily the people get to control the first, which in turn has control over the latter.
But people always have control over a company, even if that company has a monopoly. They can simply not buy the company's product or service, or use an alternate product or service. It may not be as good as the one offered by the monopoly, but no company is forcing people to pay them for their goods and services. In fact, the only entity that is forcing people to pay them for the goods and services they provide is the government.
The very definition of monopoly is that there is no alternative. I can't just go to another company because they, for instance, do not have the people I'd like to connect with in their network.
The state has monopoly on the use of violence, among other things. Just because leadership may change does not alter this fact. Would you deny the fact of a corporate monopoly simply because their leadership may change?
I don't think monopoly or not status matters to data protection law, which this might fall under. Sure, the USA (say) with anti-monopoly law but no data protection law, this might be an important point, but in EU we have monopoly law and data protection law.
Monopoly is reached, when there is a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods.
If the service facebook provides is access and contact between people, any substitute (ie, proof that there is no monopoly) would have to be near the size of facebook to qualify. How many other viable substitutes are there that reach 30% of the population? Any at 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%?
face it, facebook has a monopoly right now in regard to a service proving access and contact between people.
You're ignoring the root cause of this discussions. Which service that you're listing has a 'real name' policy?
Skype: Pseudonym (this one)
Twitter: Pseudonym (the same)
Reddit: Pseudonym (the same)
AIM: Uhm.. Nope. Guess allows pseudonyms? Not sure
GMail: No restrictions either
G+: Same as FB, hopefully the next target on the list of this group.
So - most of your list aren't playing that 'give us your real name and be prepared to hand over your ID to prove that fact' game with their users. Which is what the discussion is about. Of the services that do this, FB clearly is the leader. Or in a monopoly-esque situation.
You're shifting the issue. We're not debating which large service is requiring real names (btw, G+ has the same requirement), we're debating whether or not Facebook is a monopoly. By your logic, I could make the argument for any service being a monopoly by being specific about the type of service they are supposedly monopolizing. For instance, Twitter has a monopoly on microblogging services that use birds in their marketing.
It's interesting to exchange these retorts with you.
We really have completely different views and probably (and 50% is certainly on me) trouble understanding each other.
Microsoft was (is!) a monopoly. Although you can buy OS X, get Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Nexenta, SmartOS, Solaris, Haiku-OS or whatever floats your boat. [1]
Facebook is a monopoly, even if there are products/services available that provide something kind-of, sort-of similar.
1: Apologies for missing someone's favorite alternative OS in the list
Comparing Skype with Facebook is comparing apples with oranges.
Google plus and Twitter are closer, but a Twitter handle is not drop in replacement for Facebook group. That just leaves Google plus.
And Google plus has around 0.5% of the German population as users.
0.5% vs 30%... not a replacement exactly. almost like saying that AOL search is a replacement for Google search. However, I think the ad networks do not agree with that.
"If half the people on FB have pseudonyms it will make the process of reconnecting with old friends and family frustrating"
Why? How so? And - why do we care? If users want to choose their name, how is it relevant if it's frustrating for _other_ people to be unable to locate them?
How many people are searching the ex-gf/-bf by name to stalk and see what they're up to?
Isn't it very frustrating as well if people got married and - whoa - just give Facebook their _current_ 'real name'. You wouldn't be able to find them. Maybe the service should require you to list the maiden name, blocking you for failing to do so?
And - frankly: I know more people on FB with 'fake' names than with 'real' ones. Family, friends, random acquaintances, 70% don't use their real name. The range is from fantasy names (like, obviously invalid/~random~), to play on words/phrases (localized variants of 'Some Dude' or similar) to the braindead exercise of writing your name backwards (you'd be there as "Kram Rettun").
Against the TOS? Yeah, sure. Impossible to enforce for localized jokes or seemingly valid names anyway. And quite frankly, if it's 'frustrating' for people that want to search for old contacts is really, really not interesting _for those users_.
> Why? How so? And - why do we care? If users want to choose their name, how is it relevant if it's frustrating for _other_ people to be unable to locate them?
Well, because that's the way Facebook works. They made a decision early on to require real names because most of the value of Facebook hinged upon the ease of finding friends and family. Imagine if the white pages allowed people to use pseudonyms. It wouldn't be worth much, would it?
> How many people are searching the ex-gf/-bf by name to stalk and see what they're up to?
Dunno, lots? Who cares?
> And - frankly: I know more people on FB with 'fake' names than with 'real' ones. Family, friends, random acquaintances, 70% don't use their real name. The range is from fantasy names (like, obviously invalid/~random~), to play on words/phrases (localized variants of 'Some Dude' or similar) to the braindead exercise of writing your name backwards (you'd be there as "Kram Rettun").
This is purely anecdotal but I would put the rate of actual names used among my friends at around 99%. Now, granted, that may because I haven't found the acquaintances from my past who do use fake names, but that only bolsters my point. If most people used fake names then a large part of the appeal of Facebook would dissipate.
> Isn't it very frustrating as well if people got married and - whoa - just give Facebook their _current_ 'real name'. You wouldn't be able to find them. Maybe the service should require you to list the maiden name, blocking you for failing to do so?
Facebook has a solution for the maiden name problem, btw, (by allowing users to enter an "alternate name")[https://www.facebook.com/help/131728300237162/], and again, this is purely anecdotal, but I see a very high percentage of people in my network taking advantage of this feature. I would wager it's because most people want to be found by their friends and family.
> Against the TOS? Yeah, sure. Impossible to enforce for localized jokes or seemingly valid names anyway. And quite frankly, if it's 'frustrating' for people that want to search for old contacts is really, really not interesting _for those users_.
I don't personally have a problem with people circumventing Facebook's TOS and I'd gather that Facebook probably doesn't care all that much either. What I do have a problem with is a government arbitrarily setting a TOS for a website that people can choose whether or not to use.
The government isn't. It's not _limiting_ anyone (except FB, and even there we seem to agree that enforcing that particular rule isn't happening/hard/no priority).
It just requires FB to allow pseudonyms, officially. People still _can_ register with their 'real name', so your use case wouldn't be broken. Unless the people around you would prefer to use another name.. Which is, frankly, their choice to make (and in practice _is_ already happening today).
Right, but you're missing the point. If Facebook had prominently allowed pseudonyms in the first place it likely wouldn't have become as popular as it is today. It's the White Pages of the 21st century, and as I stated above, the White Pages would have been practically worthless had it allowed people to use pseudonyms.
You listed twitter as a "proof" that you have alternatives, as an example that FB is no monopoly.
I agree that Twitter is quite successful and big. In spite of allowing pseudonyms?
White pages don't apply. No idea how these work over there, but here they are a service to find a phone number - and sell a couple ads. You don't communicate via White Pages. In fact, you'd only use those to find people _that you usually don't communicate with_. And then _move the conversation to a different medium (phone)_.
Facebook is not related. It's not a simple register. It is not the same thing.
It's like comparing the hand-selected early Yahoo! link collection with the current Google, including Search, GMail, GTalk, G+.
Half the people I know on Facebook have changed their displayed name to some combination of their first, last, middle, or other name. They still appear to be 'valid' names, but I reckon they'd get asked to change them if Facebook ever demanded they provide proof of identification.
Not sure what to make of your claim that it's "clear" people "like" Facebook because of this requirement. People put up with it, perhaps, but I know plenty of normal everyday people on FB who aren't really playing by the rules.
The fact that it's clearly possible to use a pseudonym on Facebook makes the German complaint even more silly. But the fact remains that Facebook has decided to have this rule because they believe it makes the product better. That decision is theirs to make, and people can flaunt it (as many do) or decide not to join.
If people going through the hassle of signing up for your service isn't an indication that they like your service, we're all in a lot of trouble here at HN.
They are for sure an indication of initial interest. And given Facebook's retention and engagement rates, I think it's fairly obvious that most people like the service. That's not to say they like the company Facebook, but they obviously like keeping in touch with their friends and family using Facebook's service.
|If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them.
Similarly, if you don't like to provide pseudonyms, don't do business in Germany. Power always does what it wants, this time it is the German government with the upper hand.
So how exactly do you not do business in Germany if you're a website like Facebook? Do you just cancel all the accounts of people who listed their home country as Germany? What about people who were born in Germany but don't live there anymore? If I'm visiting Germany, will Facebook not work for me? And how exactly will Germany's public respond if they simply block them from using their service? I would wager people would be fairly upset.
Your point could be equally made about the real name policy.
How exactly do you enforce this policy? Do you just delete all people with 'wrong' names? What about people that changed their name (marriage, legal change of name) and didn't update the site?
If you'd block Germany, I'd guess there'd be a quick replacement ready (we had FB clones in the past. They are barren and empty because FB won, but I'm pretty sure that most people would Just Move On (TM). I don't expect riots over Facebook and Farmville).
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.
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.
