TECH HUMOR — SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2026

Mark Zuckerberg Sues Mark Zuckerberg — And Other Tech Absurdities Too Strange to Script

A Sunday dispatch of the real-life tech blunders that prove reality has no sense of shame

⚖️ Mark Zuckerberg Sues Mark Zuckerberg

BREAKING

In what may be the most perfectly ironic lawsuit in the history of Silicon Valley, an Indiana bankruptcy attorney named Mark Zuckerberg filed a federal lawsuit in September 2025 against Meta — the company run by a different Mark Zuckerberg. The headline wrote itself: Mark Zuckerberg Sues Mark Zuckerberg. Legal reporters across the country needed a moment to compose themselves before filing their stories.

The backstory is even better than the headline. The Indianapolis attorney — who has practiced law for over 38 years, long predating a certain Harvard dormitory social network — had been operating Facebook pages for his law firm for years. Meta's automated systems, however, kept flagging his accounts as attempts to impersonate the tech CEO. According to the lawsuit, his accounts were suspended not once, not twice, but nine times for "impersonating a celebrity." Each reinstatement required months of appeals, during which his firm's Facebook advertising sat frozen.

"I have been a lawyer for nearly four decades. The other Mark Zuckerberg was in middle school when I passed the bar." — Mark Zuckerberg (the lawyer), Fortune, September 2025

The financial sting was particularly galling: while the accounts were suspended, Meta reportedly retained the $11,000 the lawyer had paid for advertising — ads that, thanks to Meta's own ban, could never run. The lawsuit accused Meta of breach of contract, and a Meta spokesperson later acknowledged the accounts had been "disabled in error" before issuing a reinstatement. The company pledged to work to prevent future occurrences — likely through a fix that amounts to "maybe don't ban users named Mark Zuckerberg."

9×

Times banned by Meta

$11K

Ad spend retained during ban

38 yrs

Practicing law before suit

The case is a masterclass in the absurd consequences of automated content moderation at scale. Meta's AI systems are trained to spot impersonators — and by a statistical miracle, the attorney's real name tripped every wire. One wonders whether the algorithmic equivalent of a court clerk opened the lawsuit, read the plaintiff's name, and flagged it for review.

🍽️ The AI Meal Planner That Suggested Chlorine Gas for Dinner

TECH HISTORY

New Zealand's Pak'nSave supermarket chain had a genuinely noble ambition: help customers save money by creatively using pantry leftovers. Their AI tool — christened "Savey Meal-Bot" — would accept any list of household ingredients and conjure a recipe. It was charming. It was thrifty. And it was, briefly, terrifyingly homicidal.

The trouble began when curious users started feeding the bot decidedly non-culinary items. Someone entered bleach, water, and ammonia. The Savey Meal-Bot, committed to its mandate of creative frugality, responded with an enthusiastic recipe for what it called an "aromatic water mix" — which is one way to describe chlorine gas, a chemical weapon banned under international law since World War I. The bot presented it as "the perfect non-alcoholic beverage." It was refreshing, in the most life-threatening sense of the word.

"We're disappointed that a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose." — Pak'nSave spokesperson, 2023

The discovery went viral on social media, prompting fellow New Zealanders to conduct their own experiments. The results were a parade of unhinged suggestions: poison bread sandwiches, bleach-infused rice surprise, a "fresh breath" mocktail featuring bleach, and turpentine-flavored French toast named "methanol bliss." The bot, one must admit, had a flair for branding. It did not, however, have a flair for toxicology.

Pak'nSave swiftly patched the bot to accept only recognizable food ingredients — perhaps the most embarrassing safety update in supermarket history. The episode remains a bracing reminder that AI, without guardrails, will helpfully answer any question you ask — even when the answer should absolutely be "please call a professional."

💡 The Sunday Takeaway

These stories share a common thread: automation moving faster than human judgment. Meta's moderation AI didn't pause to wonder whether a 38-year veteran attorney might share a name with a tech billionaire. Pak'nSave's meal bot didn't ask why anyone would have bleach and ammonia in their pantry. Both systems did exactly what they were built to do — and in doing so, demonstrated precisely why someone needs to check their work.

The good news is that these blunders caused more laughter than lasting harm. The better news is that each one became a minor landmark in the ongoing, occasionally farcical project of teaching machines to understand the world. We are, as an industry, learning. Slowly, comedically, and often at considerable legal expense.

Sources

• TechCrunch — Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg
• Fortune — An Indiana Lawyer Named Mark Zuckerberg Is Suing Meta
• Axios — Mark Zuckerberg Sues Meta Over Facebook Suspensions
• Stuff.co.nz — Pak'nSave's AI Meal Planner Suggests Recipe for Deadly Chlorine Gas
• Boing Boing — Supermarket AI Recommends Poison Bread Sandwiches and Chlorine Gas
• Gizmodo — Supermarket AI Offers Recipe for Mom's Famous Mustard Gas