Mark Zuckerberg is suing Mark Zuckerberg and it’s not funny

A bankruptcy lawyer in Indiana named Mark Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit against Meta and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, after repeated clashes with the company’s account moderation system.

The attorney, who runs a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal services, claims his account has been wrongly disabled multiple times since 2017. According to his complaint, Meta’s automated systems routinely flagged his profile as impersonating the company’s founder. He argues that this has harmed his business and cost him financially, even though he is operating under his real name.

Speaking to local broadcaster 13WTHR, the lawyer said he has been practising law since the tech founder was a child, pointing out that his legal career started decades before Meta was established. “It’s not funny, not when they take my money. This really upset me,” he said.

Court filings show that he has spent over $11,000 promoting his services on Meta’s platforms, only to lose access to his page during account suspensions. In one email exchange from 2020, he joked about the confusion, writing that if the company happened to run into “the younger, richer Mark Zuckerberg,” they should let him know he causes “great aggravation each day.”

The confusion around his name has been a recurring theme in his personal and professional life. To highlight the issue, he created a website called iammarkzuckerberg.com, where he documents experiences ranging from mistaken phone calls to awkward encounters while travelling. He has said people sometimes hang up when he introduces himself, assuming it is a prank.

The lawyer has also faced chaotic situations at public events. During a speaking engagement in Las Vegas, a driver holding a placard with his name drew an unexpected crowd hoping to see the Meta chief, only to be disappointed. He said this kind of mix-up is common, and at times, he even receives threatening calls or requests for money from people who mistake him for the billionaire.

Meta acknowledged the situation in a statement to 13WTHR, saying the company is investigating the repeated errors that led to the lawyer’s page being flagged. “We know there’s more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and we are getting to the bottom of this,” the company said.

Despite the challenges, the attorney has leaned into the coincidence, noting that he consistently appears first in Google searches for “Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy.” On his website, he said he bears no ill will towards Meta’s founder but added that if the tech billionaire ever faced financial difficulties, he would be ready to represent him in court “in honour of their shared name.”

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