Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed the alleged leaker had committed ‘a betrayal’
Mark Zuckerberg once sent a chilling warning to Facebook employees after alleged insider information was leaked to the press.
Back in 2010, Meta co-founder Zuckerberg, then 25, was revelling in his successes.
He’d just been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year while also being crowned as the youngest billionaire in the world by Forbes.
But behind the scenes, the businessman was allegedly reeling after discovering one of his Facebook staff members had ‘betrayed’ him.
Last year, an email Zuckerberg sent to his employees in 2010 resurfaced online with the subject line ‘Please Resign’.
In the correspondence, the Harvard University-dropout discussed his dismay after reading an article claiming Facebook was building a cell phone.
“Lots of you saw the TechCrunch story over the weekend claiming that we’re building a mobile phone,” wrote Zuckerberg in the leaked email.
“We’re not building a phone and I spoke at length at the Q&A on Friday about what we’re actually doing—building ways to make all phones and apps more social.”
He went on to claim how ‘frustrating’ and ‘destructive’ it was to discover that a source had spoken to TechCrunch and that he had written it up as an ‘act of betrayal’.
Mark Zuckerberg claimed the situation was ‘frustrating’. (Johannes Simon/Getty Images)
“The fact that the story was inaccurate doesn’t make it any better,” Zuckerberg continued. “I’ve had to personally spend a lot of time over the last few days—as have a lot of other people—cleaning up the damage from this mess.
“Even now, we’re in a more precarious position with companies in the mobile space who should be our partners because now they think we’re competitors.”
In the email, initially shared by the popular Internal Tech Emails X account, the father-of-four went on to threaten the alleged ‘leaker’.
He claimed that if they didn’t ‘resign immediately’ he would ‘certainly find out’ who they were.
“If you believe that it’s ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave,” Zuckerberg continued to write.
“We’re a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here at Facebook.
Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in 2004. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
“That’s culturally important to us and I’m committed to keeping it. But the cost of an open culture is that we all have to protect confidential information we share internally.
“If we don’t, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world.”
He continued to allege that press leaks ‘undermined’ work culture and that he wanted to continue allowing people to ask ‘difficult questions’.
“Let’s commit to maintaining complete confidentially about the company—no exceptions. If you can’t handle that, then just leave. We have too much social good to build to have to deal with this.”
Zuckerberg has not publicly commented on the brutal, company-wide email since it was posted online last year.
