There's more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and one of them is absolutely fed up with Meta's inability to figure that out. An Indianapolis bankruptcy attorney who happens to share the tech mogul's name is taking Facebook's parent company to court after years of account suspensions, lost advertising dollars, and what he calls "offensive" treatment by a platform that supposedly prides itself on connecting people.
Mark Steven Zuckerberg (yes, that's really his name) filed suit in Marion Superior Court this week, accusing Meta of negligence and breach of contract after his verified Facebook accounts were repeatedly shut down for "impersonating a celebrity" and using a "false name." The irony? He's been practicing law under that name for 38 years, longer than Facebook has even existed, and he's been dealing with this particular headache since his first account was deactivated way back in 2010.
The Indianapolis lawyer's frustration reached a boiling point in May when Meta suspended his business page for the fourth time while pocketing over $11,000 in advertising fees he'd paid to promote his bankruptcy law practice. His personal account has been shuttered five times over the years, and according to court documents, his verified pages have been disabled at least nine times since 2010. Each time, he's forced to endure what he describes as a "painfully long appeals process," submitting photos of himself, his driver's license, and credit cards to prove he's a real person who isn't violating community standards.
"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," Zuckerberg told The Post. "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." The attorney, who distinguishes himself as Mark Steven versus the CEO's Mark Elliot, says the repeated suspensions aren't just annoying anymore. They're hurting his ability to compete with other local law firms who rely on social media advertising to attract clients.
The name coincidence has created problems that stretch far beyond Facebook's algorithms. Zuckerberg's law firm receives daily calls from confused Facebook users seeking help with their accounts, and packages meant for the billionaire CEO regularly show up at his office. In 2020, he was even mistakenly sued by Washington State's Department of Social and Health Services for alleged financial exploitation. The mix-ups became so frequent that he launched a website to track them all.
But it's Meta's handling of the situation that really gets under his skin. Despite multiple back-and-forth emails and apologies from the company over the years, the suspensions keep happening. "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," he said. "It's like they're almost doing it on purpose, but I'm sure they're not but it feels like it."
Meta, for its part, seems to be taking the lawsuit seriously. A spokesperson told The Post that the company just received Zuckerberg's complaint and is reviewing it. "We know there's more than one Mark Zuckerberg in the world, and we are getting to the bottom of this," they said, though they declined to answer additional questions about the company's name verification processes or why the repeated suspensions keep happening despite previous resolutions.
The case highlights a broader issue with how social media platforms handle identity verification, especially when users share names with public figures. This isn't Meta's first rodeo with naming controversies. The company has previously suspended accounts belonging to people with unusual names or names that match celebrities, including a high-profile incident where novelist Salman Rushdie was suspended and then reinstated as "Ahmed Rushdie," his legal name that he's never used professionally.
For the Indianapolis attorney, though, this isn't about abstract policy debates. It's about his business and his livelihood. "It's the fact that they're affecting my business now, you know, my clients can't find me," he stressed. His lawsuit seeks not just a refund of his advertising money and attorney fees, but an injunction to prevent future suspensions.
In a moment of wishful thinking, Zuckerberg laid out his ideal resolution: "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." While that personal apology from his famous namesake might be a long shot, the case could push Meta to finally develop better systems for handling the reality that sometimes, multiple people really do share the same name, even when one of them happens to run one of the world's biggest social media companies.
The lawsuit represents what might be the first case of its kind, where someone is suing a tech giant not for privacy violations or antitrust issues, but simply for being unable to exist online under their own legal name. As Gizmodo reports, having the same name as one of the world's most powerful CEOs "might sound like a networking advantage, but for an Indiana lawyer, it's been more curse than blessing."
