A US lawyer — who shares the same name as the tech billionaire — takes legal action against Meta over the repeated removal of his Facebook pages
A US lawyer with the same name as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta, the parent company of the social media giant, because his pages keep getting suspended.
Unlike his Silicon Valley namesake, Indianapolis lawyer Mark S. Zuckerberg has spent the past three decades practising law, specialising in consumer bankruptcy and debt relief.
This name mix-up is no new phenomenon. Zuckerberg told reporters that his account has been suspended five times over the last eight years, having first opened a Facebook account in 2009. You can’t accuse him of lacking a sense of humour about the whole situation: in 2015 the attorney launched a tongue-in-cheek website called IamMarkZuckerberg.com. Zuckerberg told Wired in 2016 that “It was kind of funny. I had my real two minutes of fame.”
However, it seems that his patience has run out. According to the lawsuit filed at Marion County Superior Court, Zuckerberg claims that the repeated suspensions have cost him thousands of dollars in lost business.
“It’s not funny,” Mr Zuckerberg told website WTHR-TV. “Not when they take my money.”
The lawyer is accusing Meta of negligence and breach of contract after paying $11,000 for advertising on the site for his business, which he argues was improperly taken down.
“It’s like buying a billboard… and then they put a blanket over it,” he told the website.
Emails with Facebook he shared online reveal accusations of not using his ‘authentic name’ and warning that the account would be permanently disabled if the issue continued. Zuckerberg continuously provided them with various forms of ID to verify his identity, but it was not enough.
His account was shut down in May and only restored after the lawsuit was filed.
Meta has since released a statement, saying it has reinstated Mark [S] Zuckerberg’s account, after finding it had been disabled in error. We appreciate Mr Zuckerberg’s continued patience on this issue and are working to try and prevent this from happening in the future.”
He’s reportedly seeking reimbursement, legal fees, and an injunction — but has joked he’d settle for an apology, or even just a handshake, from the other Zuckerberg.
