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Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged dictatorial management style resurfaced in an email the Facebook founder sent more than a decade ago with the subject line “Please Resign” after one of his workers leaked information to the media.
The 2010 email from Zuckerberg to Facebook staff — posted over the weekend by the Twitter account known as “Internal Tech Emails” — blasted the leak from an internal meeting about the social network’s future plans as an act of “betrayal.”
“Confidential — Do Not Share,” began the message, which has gotten more than 3 million views since being posted on Internal Tech Emails’ Twitter account Sunday.
“Lots of you saw the TechCrunch story … claiming that we’re building a mobile phone. “We’re not building a phone and I spoke at length … about what we’re actually doing — building ways to make all phones and apps more social.”
“This was an act of betrayal,” Zuckerberg raged.
“So I’m asking whoever leaked this to resign immediately,” he continued. “If you believe that it’s ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave.”
The email from Mark Zuckerberg to staffers included the subject line “Please Resign.”
The tech wunderkind, who was 25 at the time, then issued a threat to the leaker.
“If you don’t resign, we will almost certainly find out who you are anyway.”
Zuckerberg, who recently laid off thousands of employees at Meta as part of a restructuring and cost-cutting spree, brooded over his employees leaking information to the press in the 2010 email.
“It is frustrating and destructive that anyone here thought is [sic] was okay to say this to anyone outside the company,” he wrote. “The fact that the story was inaccurate doesn’t make it any better.”
The Post has sought comment from former journalist Michael Arrington, who wrote the TechCrunch story that Zuckerberg denied.
Arrington, a co-founder of TechCrunch, has since moved on to head Arrington Capital, a Web3-centric venture capital firm.
Zuckerberg’s 2010 email went on to lament the fallout from the leak.
Mark Zuckerberg: “Please Resign”
September 22, 2010 pic.twitter.com/3Coz46QFRR— Internal Tech Emails (@TechEmails) March 19, 2023
“I’ve had to personally spend a lot of time over the last few days … cleaning up the damage from this mess,” he wrote. “Even now, we’re in a more precarious position with companies in the mobile space who should be our partners because they now think we’re competitors.”
While pledging to crack down on leaks to the press, Zuckerberg wrote in the next sentence: “We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook.”
“But the cost of an open culture is that we all have to protect the confidential information we share internally,” he wrote.
“If we don’t, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world.”
The Post has sought comment from Facebook’s parent company, Meta.
In 2016, a former Facebook employee who was fired from his account executive position wrote a book alleging that Zuckerberg ruled the company with an iron fist.
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