A bankruptcy attorney based in Indiana, United States, named Mark Stephen Zuckerberg, is suing Facebook after the social media giant repeatedly shut down his account, claiming he was impersonating the company’s famous founder.
Zuckerberg says he has been battling the social media giant for years after his business and personal pages were repeatedly blocked.
The attorney, who has practised law for nearly four decades, said the ordeal cost him thousands of dollars in lost business. He claimed he spent over $11,000 (£8,000) on Facebook ads to promote his law firm, only for the platform to accuse him of “impersonating a celebrity”, despite carrying the name long before the tech mogul was even old enough to walk.
Sharing a name with one of the world’s richest men has made his life difficult: he has received death threats, persistent tech-support calls, and more than 100 daily friend requests from strangers.
On one occasion in Las Vegas, he approached a limo driver holding a sign with his name, only to be mobbed by fans waiting for the Meta boss.
He added that he sometimes books restaurants under fake names because staff assume “Mark Zuckerberg” is a prank caller.
“I’d rather not pick a fight with them, but I don’t know how to make them stop,” he said of Facebook.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, acknowledged the confusion, stating: “We know there’s more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and we are getting to the bottom of this.”
Zuckerberg is suing for damages and legal fees. Still, he joked that he might consider dropping the case if the billionaire founder offered an unusual settlement: “If he let me spend a week on his boat to say I’m sorry, I’d probably take him up on that”.
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