“I can’t use my name when making reservations or conducting business as people assume I’m a prank caller and hang up,” lawyer Mark S. Zuckerberg said…..CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
A bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana who shares a name with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out about the challenges he faces and explained why he filed a lawsuit against the tech company on Tuesday after Facebook accused him of impersonation.
“I’m Mark Steven. And he’s Mark Elliot,” the Indiana lawyer told local news outlet 13WTHR on Wednesday, referring to their respective middle names.
The lawyer, Mark S. Zuckerberg, has a website, iammarkzuckerberg.com, where he details the “interesting things” that have happened to him because of his name — including receiving over 100 friend requests daily from people confusing him with the CEO, as well as receiving packages, letters, complaints, suggestions and demands on how to “improve Facebook.”
“I can’t use my name when making reservations or conducting business as people assume I’m a prank caller and hang up,” the attorney wrote on his website.
A photo of Meta CEO Mark Elliot Zuckerberg — not to be confused with Indiana bankruptcy lawyer Mark Steven Zuckerberg, who spent thousands of dollars to promote his business on Facebook but was suspended.
The less-famous Zuckerberg went on to say that he has received “Venmo payment requests and money solicitations from total strangers” as well as from “relatives” who reached out to him.
He recounted one instance in Las Vegas when a limo driver waited for him with a sign that read “Mark Zuckerberg” and drew a crowd that became disappointed when he arrived instead of the Meta CEO.
“My life sometimes feels like the Michael Jordan ESPN commercial, where a regular person’s name causes constant mix-ups,” the lawyer wrote.
In more serious instances, Zuckerberg said, he has routinely received death threats and messages meant for the Meta CEO.
However, the lawsuit the attorney filed on Tuesday was due to Meta repeatedly suspending his commercial Facebook account, accusing him of “impersonating a celebrity” and not using an “authentic name,” he said.
He’s had the name longer than the 41-year-old CEO, the lawyer said, telling 13WTHR, “I’ve got better things to do than sue Facebook.”
“They have more money and more lawyers and more resources than I do. I’d rather not pick a fight with them, but I don’t know how else to make them stop!” he lamented.
Zuckerberg said his business account was shut down five times in the last eight years and his personal account has been taken down four times. Each time, he went through the proper appeals process.
The attorney’s lawsuit states that he has spent over $11,000 to advertise on Meta. Even so, Meta “often” takes “months” to reinstate his commercial page after a suspension, according to the suit.
“For somebody who purports to be one of the leading tech companies in the world, and they can’t stop doing this? And they can’t seem to get their appeal process to work? I think they have a problem,” he said.
A spokesperson for Meta told HuffPost the company has “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,” the spokesperson said.
Attorneys representing the Indiana lawyer did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, but court records reviewed on Friday showed that the lawsuit is still ongoing.
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“If he wants to fly here personally and say ‘I’m sorry,’ or maybe let me spend a week on his boat to say I’m sorry, I’d probably take him up on that,” Zuckerberg quipped to the local news outlet…….CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
