Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta. The lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. However, his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years because Meta’s moderation systems flag his account for falsely impersonating the platform’s founder.
Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer is not impersonating anyone, because he is also named Mark Zuckerberg. In his legal complaint, he points out that he has been practicing law since the Meta CEO was just three years old.
“It’s not funny,” the lawyer said to Indianapolis’ 13WTHR. “Not when they take my money. This really pissed me off.”
Mark Zuckerberg has spent over $11,000 to advertise his page on Meta’s platforms. When his account is disabled for allegedly impersonating himself, he still has to pay for these advertisements.
In his complaint, the lawyer shared a copy of a 2020 email thread where he asks about his wrongly disabled account and references that he has been in touch with the platform about this issue since 2017. “Also, if you happen to run into the younger, richer Mark Zuckerberg, tell him I said hi and he causes me great aggravation each day,” the lawyer wrote in one email.
Mark Zuckerberg has long been haunted by the looming presence of his famous namesake. He even created a website where he chronicles how his life has been shaped by being named Mark Zuckerberg.
“I can’t use my name when making reservations or conducting business as people assume I’m a prank caller and hang up,” he said. “My life sometimes feels like the Michael Jordan ESPN commercial, where a regular person’s name causes constant mixups.”
While the attorney may not be a high-profile billionaire, he is a respected figure in bankruptcy law and sometimes flies out to Las Vegas for speaking engagements. But even on his own turf, he cannot escape the other Mark Zuckerberg. “While speaking in Las Vegas, a limo driver was waiting for me at the bottom of the escalator with a sign for ‘Mark Zuckerberg,’ causing chaos as a large disappointed crowd had been waiting,” he wrote.
On a regular basis, the lawyer says he receives phone calls and messages intended for the tech founder, which sometimes include death threats and requests for money. When this daily nuisance turned into a potential loss of income, he lost his patience.
Meta told 13WTHR, “We know there’s more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and we are getting to the bottom of this.”
If there is any bit of solace for the lawyer, it is that he will always show up first when you Google “Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy,” at least for now. “I don’t wish Mark E. Zuckerberg any ill will at all,” he wrote on his website. “I hope the best for him, but let me tell you this: I will rule the search for ‘Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy.’ And if he does fall upon difficult financial times, and happens to be in Indiana, I will gladly handle his case in honor of our eponymy.”