Louise Osborne reports:
A German state data protection agency has threatened Facebook’s billionaire founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg with a €20,000 (£16,000) fine if Facebook does not allow Germans to have anonymous accounts on the social network.
In letters to Zuckerberg in California, and also to Dublin-based Facebook Ireland Ltd, the data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, said the current rules violated German law by requiring users to provide their identities. “It is unacceptable that a US portal like Facebook violates German data protection law, unopposed and with no prospect of an end,” said Weichert.
Read more on The Guardian.
Okay, so what happens if, say, Zuck says, “No problem. I’ll pay the fine.” Then what could the data protection commissioner do? Even if Facebook was fined on a daily basis, if they said, “No problem, we’ll pay the fine.” Then what?