Germany won’t be friends with Facebook unless privacy policies are changed

Facebook may pay a €20,000 ($26,000) fine unless it allows German citizens to create anonymous accounts on the social network. A state data protection agency said that Facebook’s refusal to allow pseudonyms on the site is a violation of German law.

“It is unacceptable that a US portal like Facebook violates German data protection law, unopposed and with no prospect of an end,” data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weicher, said in letters addressed to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dublin-based Facebook Ireland Ltd.

German law states that all media services must offer users the ability to use a pseudonym wherever such an option is possible and reasonable.