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Article

26 Oct 2015

Author:
Sarah Gunther, Columbia Univ. (USA)

Full paper: "Facebook’s 'Real Name' Policy: A Violation of the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights"

In this paper, I evaluate the allegations made by activists against Facebook that its real-name policy violates the rights to privacy, expression and association. I assess Facebook’s response to these allegations by drawing on standards including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Global Network Initiative’s Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy. I also compare Facebook’s policy to that of other social networking platforms to assess the company’s justification that its policy is necessary for ensuring user safety, and find that Facebook is increasingly alone in its insistence on this policy. I conclude that Facebook’s real-name policy amounts to a violation of its corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and that it has not taken sufficient steps to remedy the situation.