If you found that headline confusing, try to imagine the constant bemusing misery that arrives at the door of seemingly the only other Mark Zuckerberg, an attorney who is finding his life made increasingly complicated by the shared name. So even though it’s not actually Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg that’s suing Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the mop-haired billionaire remains the cause of the consternation, because for Indiana lawyer Mark Zuckerberg, sharing the Facebook creator’s name is causing him massive issues in both his work and personal life, and indeed costing him lots of money.
As reported by TechCrunch, Mark S. Zuckerberg—a bankruptcy attorney from Indiana—is repeatedly having his paid-for Facebook posts removed by Meta, and his accounts closed down, on the inaccurate basis that he’s falsely impersonating Mark E. Zuckerberg, co-creator of Facebook—and he’s not getting his money back. He’s had enough.
Speaking to Indiana’s WTHR, Mark S. explained that he and Facebook’s Zuck are the only two people he can find who share the name, meaning his situation is rather unique. Four times Facebook has suspended the attorney’s business account and deleted his firm’s advertisements, based on the belief that he’s deliberately trying to pass himself off as the tech billionaire, and then failing to return his resulting lost costs. So this Zuckerberg is now suing that Zuckerberg to get his money back, his legal fees paid, and potential lost money as a result of Meta’s actions.
“All my competitors advertise on Facebook,” says our new favorite Mark Zuckerberg, “so I have to do it too.” Speaking to the Indianapolis news station, he says he pays for ads, “they take my money, but then they shut me down.”
Meta gave a statement to WTHR saying, “We know there’s more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world and we are getting to the bottom of this.”
Mark S. Zuckerberg’s life isn’t only affected in this way. It seems sharing his name with one of the most controversial figures in the world comes with a personal cost, too. He has in fact dedicated an entire website to the topic, on which he talks about how even his personal Facebook account has been suspended five times, despite providing three forms of identification each time he re-opens it, and when it’s working he’s the constant target of hacking attempts, while his phone blows up with notifications every night. (Dude, come on, just turn the notifications off. And don’t even have the app on your phone. No one should. It’s looking at data from all your other apps.) His office receives daily phone calls from furious people demanding tech support, and he says he “routinely” receives death threats and harassment via Messenger.
In fact, at one point he was accidentally sued by the State of Washington, which somehow mistook him for the other guy. And that must suck. Short of changing his own name (and really, the world should surely be able to cope with two people using it), he’s left resorting to legal action to at least not have it cost him money. Oh, and the attention it’s attracting in the press probably won’t do him much harm, either.
Mark S. Zuckerberg’s site ends on a lovely note:
“Like I said, I don’t wish Mark E. Zuckerberg any ill will at all. 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.”