- A Stanford law professor dropped Meta as a client after Mark Zuckerberg’s recent changes.
- Mark Lemley represented Meta in an AI copyright case in 2023 involving comedian Sarah Silverman and others.
- Zuckerberg’s recent changes to Meta align more closely with Elon Musk’s opinions and strategies.
Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor and attorney who represented Meta in an AI copyright case in 2023, says he has dropped the company as a client because of what he described as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “descension into toxic masculinity and neo-Nazi madness.”
“I have dismissed 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 hope they prevail, I can no longer in good conscience serve as their lawyer,” Lemley. , a partner at law firm Lex Lumina, wrote in a LinkedIn post Monday.
Lemley and Lex Lumina represented Meta when comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors sued the Facebook owner in 2023, saying it infringed copyright by training the Llama AI model for books they had written.
At the time, Meta’s lawyers argued that the claims should fail because the authors could not prove the text created by Llama closely resembled their books. The case is ongoing.
In the LinkedIn post, Lemley also said he was changing the way he used some Meta products.
He has deactivated his Threads account because he didn’t want to “support a Twitter-like site run by a wannabe Musk.”
The lawyer also said he will no longer buy any of the ads he comes across on Facebook or Instagram.
“While I have considered leaving 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 matters relating 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 to Meta
Since the beginning of the year, Zuckerberg has made sweeping changes to Meta. They include eliminating fact checking by third parties on the US platform in favor of community notes.
Meta planned too undercut diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Zuckerberg recently said that Meta needs more “masculine energy.”
“Masculine energy, I think is good, and obviously society has enough of that, but I think the corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” he told the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Zuckerberg’s changes to 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 parties and political figures in Europe and the US.
He is a prominent supporter of the President-elect Donald Trumpand has joined the leadership of a commission called Department of Government Efficiencyor DOGE.
In politics and building relationships with Trump, too, Zuckerberg’s actions have begun to mirror those of Musk. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Zuckerberg also refused to endorse any candidate during the 2024 election campaign.
The moves mark a marked shift in how Zuckerberg approaches Trump.
In 2020, after Facebook was criticized for that of then-president violent remarks on the platform, Zuckerberg said he was “deeply shocked and disgusted by President Trump’s divisive and inflammatory rhetoric.”
Trump was banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for what Meta called glorifying “the people involved in the violence at the Capitol on January 6th.” Meta reversed the decision two years later.
