‘An act of betrayal’: Furious Mark Zuckerberg was so incensed over Facebook info leaked to media he demanded worker to ‘Please Resign’ in confidential 2010 email that has now resurfaced and been viewed 3m times

• The confidential email to Facebook staff was posted over the weekend on Twitter
• Zuckerberg was upset over a TechCrunch story that inaccurately detailed the company’s plans

A furious Mark Zuckerberg was so incensed over Facebook information leaked to the media that he demanded whoever was responsible to ‘Please Resign’.

The Facebook cofounder and owner’s anger resurfaced in a confidential email that he sent in 2010, which has now been viewed 3 million times, after one of his workers leaked information to the media.

The email to Facebook staff, posted over the weekend by a Twitter account known as Internal Tech Emails, called the leak from an internal meeting about the social network’s plans an ‘act of betrayal’.

Zuckerberg was upset over a TechCrunch story that said the company was secretly building the software for a mobile phone and working with a third party to build the hardware, which he said was inaccurate.  

The 2010 Zuckerberg email, dated September 22, had ‘Please Resign’ as the subject line and began with the line: ‘Confidential – Do Not Share’.

Mark Zuckerberg was upset over a TechCrunch story that said the company is secretly building the software for a cell phone and working with a third party to build the hardware, which the company said was inaccurate

The 2010 Zuckerberg email, dated September 22, had ‘Please Resign’ as the subject line and began with the line: ‘Confidential – Do Not Share’

Zuckerberg wrote: ‘Lots of you saw the TechCrunch story over the weekend claiming that we’re building a mobile phone. We’re not building a phone and I spoke at length at the Q&A… about what we’re actually doing – building ways to make all phones and apps more social.’

‘This was an act of betrayal,’ it continued. ‘So I’m asking whoever leaked this to resign immediately.’

Zuckerberg, who was 25 at the time, added: ‘If you believe that it’s ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave.

‘If you don’t resign, we will almost certainly find out who you are anyway.’

Facebook, which is now branded Meta, has laid off thousands of staff members as part of what Zuckerberg has termed the company’s ‘year of efficiency’.

In an email to employees earlier this month, Zuckerberg, 38, said Meta would get rid of 10,000 jobs over the next few months and that 5,000 other roles would remain vacant. 

Brooding over his employees leaking information to the press in the 2010 email, Zuckerberg wrote: ‘It is frustrating and destructive that anyone here thought is [sic] was okay to say this to anyone outside the company.

‘The fact that the story was inaccurate doesn’t make it any better.’

Zuckerberg, who was 25 at the time, wrote in the email: ‘If you believe that it’s ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave’

Former journalist Michael Arrington penned the article referenced in the email. 

Arrington, 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 say: ‘I’ve had to personally spend a lot of time over the last few days … 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 they now think we’re competitors.’

While pledging to work towards preventing future leaks to the press, Zuckerberg said: ‘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 

‘If we don’t, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world.’

In 2016, a former Facebook employee, Antonio Garcia Martinez, wrote a book that likened the company to a cult and said Zuckerberg’s leadership style was comparable to that of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un. 

In Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, Martinez also wrote that female workers at Facebook were told how to dress and that they had to avoid wearing skirts that were deemed too short so that they would not be ‘distracting’ to others.

Last week, Meta announced that it has rolled out a paid verification service in the United States, similar to Twitter Blue service, for Instagram and Facebook.

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