A Lawyer Says He Dropped Meta As A Client After What He Called A 'descent Into Toxic Masculinity' By Zuckerberg's Company

Mark Zuckerberg has made a raft of changes to Meta policies.

Meta

• A Stanford law professor dropped Meta as a client in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg's recent changes.
• Mark Lemley represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case involving comedian Sarah Silverman and others.
• Zuckerberg's recent changes at Meta more closely align with Elon Musk's opinions and strategies.

Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor and lawyer who represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case, says he has dropped the company as a client because of what he described as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness."

"I have fired Meta as a client. While I think they are on the right side in the generative AI copyright dispute in which I represented them, and I hope they win, I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer," Lemley, a partner at the law firm Lex Lumina, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

Lemley and Lex Lumina represented Meta when comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors sued the Facebook owner in 2023, saying it violated copyright by training the Llama AI model on books they had written.

At the time, Meta's lawyers argued the claims should fail because the authors could not prove Llama generated text that closely resembled their books. The case is ongoing.

In the LinkedIn post, Lemley also said he was changing how he used some Meta products.

He has deactivated his Threads account as he did not want to "support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe."

The lawyer also said he will no longer buy anything from ads he encounters on Facebook or Instagram.

"While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here," Lemley wrote.

Lemley is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. At Lex Lumina, he works with clients on cases pertaining to intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law.

Lemley, Lex Lumina, Sarah Silverman and Meta did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Changes at Meta

Since the start of the year, Zuckerberg has made sweeping changes to Meta. They include eliminating third-party fact-checking on the platform in the US in favor of community notes.

Meta also planned to reduce diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Zuckerberg recently said Meta needs more "masculine energy."

"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he told the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.

Zuckerberg's changes at Meta resemble those made by Tesla and X owner Elon Musk.

Musk has spoken out against DEI and content moderation. Politically, Musk has thrown his support behind right-leaning political parties and figures in Europe and the US.

He's a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, and is joined lead of a commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In politics and relationship-building with Trump, too, Zuckerberg's actions are starting to mirror Musk's. Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Zuckerberg also declined to endorse any candidate during the 2024 election campaign.

These moves mark a distinct change in how Zuckerberg approaches Trump.

In 2020, after Facebook was criticized over the then-president's violent remarks on the platform, Zuckerberg said he was "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric."

Trump was barred from Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for what Meta called praising "people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6." Meta reversed the decision two years later.