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A man named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta after they claimed that he was impersonating the billionaire.
The man who shares his name with the tech mogul is pursuing damages from the social media company after it repeatedly shut down personal and business profiles he set up.
The lesser known Mark Zuckerberg is a lawyer from Indiana who was accused of impersonating the Facebook co-founder.
After having issues around mistaken identity for the last 15 years, things finally came to a head when Zuckerberg lost $11,000 in ad funds to Meta after his law firm’s page was taken down.
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He said: “Normally you would say, well, it’s just Facebook and it’s not a big deal, but this time it’s affecting my bottom line because I was paying for advertising for my business to try and get clients.
“So they took my money, but then after they took my money, they shut me down for what they say is impersonating a celebrity, not using a true name and violating their community standards. And it’s the same message I get every time they shut me down.”
In the lawsuit, Zuckerberg accuses Meta of negligence and breach of contract for suspending his accounts for baseless and improper reasons.
He detailed how his profile on Facebook was first deactivated back in 2010 and is regularly subjected to a long appeals process in order to get his accounts restored.
Zuckerberg continued: “I think it’s offensive that a company that is supposed to be so tech savvy in the world can’t figure out how to flag my accounts and keep this from happening.
“It’s like they’re almost doing it on purpose, but I’m sure they’re not but it feels like it.”
A spokesperson for Meta spoke to the New York Post, saying: “We know there’s more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and we are getting to the bottom of this.”
In a further comment, they added: “We have reinstated Mark 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.”
Zuckerberg went on to say: “It’s the fact that they’re affecting my business now, you know, my clients can’t find me.
“I want an injunction, I want them to not do it again, and I want [Mark Zuckerberg] to fly out here, hand me my check, shake my hands and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but that’s never gonna happen.”
