Real-name system

This allowed them to track property ownership and inheritance, collect taxes, maintain court records, perform police work, conscript soldiers and control epidemics.

On 27 January 2022, the highest court in civil matters, the Bundesgerichtshof, decided that Facebook’s ban of pseudonyms is illegal for users who registered before GDPR was implemented in May 2018.

[2] Since 2009, 35 Korean websites have implemented a name registration system in compliance with South Korea's amended Information and Communications Network Act.

Real name systems aim to minimize the amount of negative information published on the Internet and encourage netizens to be responsible for their online behavior.

South Koreans have been familiar with offline real-name systems since the mid-1990s, when legislation was introduced that required a real name to be used for property and financial transactions.

[3] On 23 August 2012, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled unanimously that the real-name requirements imposed on portal service providers were unconstitutional, claiming that this violates freedom of speech in cyberspace.

[6] Major microblogging sites like Sina Weibo, 163 and Sohu agreed to put real name systems into practice by 16 March 2012.

[10] The enforcement of real-name systems has resulted in a series of conflicts known as nymwars, which raised issues regarding naming, cultural sensitivity, public and private identity, privacy, and the role of social media in modern discourse.

After wide-ranging criticisms from a number of high-profile commentators, Google dropped the real-name policy in July 2014 and ended restrictions on names.

According to Danah Boyd, a social media scholar, "people provided their name because they saw the site as an extension of campus life."

[13] Emil Protalinski, technology journalist for The Next Web, states that some "Facebook users opt to use pseudonyms to hide from stalkers, abusive exes, and even governments that don't condone free speech.