Why Mark S. Zuckerberg is suing Facebook’s parent company Meta

Every day, Mark S. Zuckerberg receives hundreds of friend requests, phone calls seeking tech support to unlock accounts, and letters with complaints, demands and suggestions to improve Facebook.

The irony is that Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer in Indianapolis for the past 38 years, gets regularly blocked from his own personal and business accounts on the social media site founded by his near-namesake – and he hasn’t been able to get the company to solve the problem.

So last week, Zuckerberg filed a lawsuit in Marion County Superior Court in Indiana accusing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, of negligence and breach of contract after continually deactivating his business account “for unjust and improper reasons.”

Though the reason is singular: The site’s algorithm repeatedly flagged his accounts as “fake” because he is not the social media tycoon Mark E. Zuckerberg.

Mark S. Zuckerberg’s suit, which does not specify monetary damages, says that Meta made “false accusations of ‘impersonating a celebrity’ and not using an ‘authentic name’.”

The two Zuckerbergs are not related.

Zuckerberg, the consumer bankruptcy lawyer, contends that the suspensions – at least four of which he has documented in the past eight years – have disrupted his office’s business while costing him thousands in advertising and an untold number of clients who never learnt of his practice.

His personal account has been suspended at least five times, he said. But he said that these examples are only the ones he can prove, and that it has surely been more than 10 times, between his two accounts. The first time it happened was in 2011.

“I’m trying to be reasonable,” Zuckerberg said from his office in downtown Indianapolis on Tuesday. “I just want to be left alone. I’ve got better things to do than fight with Meta. I’d rather just be attending to my clients, and then joining my family. But I don’t know how else to make them stop.”

Facebook’s accusations stuck, even after the lawyer provided verification documents, like his professional license. He said that he continued to lose access for months at a time. A recent suspension lasted six months.

He had been suspended for about four months, most recently, until he filed the lawsuit last week and his suspension was lifted.

“We have reinstated Mark Zuckerberg’s account, after finding it had been disabled in error,” a Meta spokesperson said this week. “We appreciate Mr Zuckerberg’s continued patience on this issue and are working to try and prevent this from happening in the future.”

Zuckerberg said that he has been suspended for a combined total of more than 10 months over the past couple of years. “If I had patience, I wouldn’t have sued them,” he said. “I’d like this resolved finally.”

He said that the lawsuit was already successful, in a way, because he got his Facebook business page back up, after four months of appeals “going nowhere”.

As far as damages, Zuckerberg wants Meta to pay for his lawyers’ fees; his information technology team, which handles his online advertising and has additional work each time he has had to go through Facebook’s lengthy appeals process; and $US11,000 ($16,677) for money spent on Facebook ads that he said were a waste.

Facebook is a crucial platform for finding clients, Zuckerberg said, because his competition is there, and also because most of his clients don’t know a lawyer or how to find one.

“It’s usually a one-and-done type of thing,” he said of personal bankruptcy. “So it is important to market, and keep your name out there and try, and get to the people that are in trouble, so you can help them and file a bankruptcy for them.”

Though the lawsuit is giving Zuckerberg and his law practice media attention around the world, he said that he’d much rather be talking about bankruptcy than Facebook.

“I want them to promise that they really, really will fix it this time,” he said. “Which I don’t know if they can.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.