Facebook violated freedom of expression and our right to privacy of personal data: made it impossible to name the location of birth and living in any language the users prefer. The social network system over night changed (or allowed someone else to do so – equally oppressive) a password protected area of our Facebook-account, changing the name of our cities without any previous announcement, and making it impossible to be modified. In many parts of the world – United Kingdom, Brussels, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, USA, Alaska etc. etc. etc. – there are hundreds of thousands of localities which have names in more than one language. For the same city or village in Romania there are historical names in Romanian, Hungarian and German, recognized and used by millions of people and maps, too, such as Cluj-Napoca-Kolozsvár-Klausenburg. In Europe alone there are 329 different kind of ethnic minorities, totally more than 86 million inhabitants, all using their own language in naming the places they live in.
This Facebook-action is being perceived as violation of freedom of speech, most unusual in the democratic modern world of the 21st century, where diversity is considered a value, and quite ambivalent considering Facebook as one of the ultimate platforms of free expression and communication in all the languages there can be.
We ask for restoration of our right of expression. We can’t accept this embarrassing new situation as being in the best interest of Facebook as well, as disappointed people will at least not declare their place of birth and living, or even leaving this social network, as it already happened in the past few days.
