Advertisement

Mark Zuckerberg branded early Facebook users ‘dumb f***s’ for sharing their data with him

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

This week, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has thrown a harsh light on how Facebook uses the data its billions of users share with it.

And an early conversation from Mark Zuckerberg shows that the CEO himself was at one point confused by why people would share so much information with him.

Dating from the early years of this century, when Facebook had just 4,000 users, the conversation was highlighted this week in a Medium post by Maria Bustillos entitled ‘The Smallness of Mark Zuckerberg.’

It’s from messaging records dating from when Mark Zuckerberg was 19, and was first leaked to the media in 2010.

Zuckerberg: Yea so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. ‘i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sms

Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one?

Zuckerberg: people just submitted it. i don’t know why. they “trust me”. dumb f***s.

Alexander NIx of Cambridge Analytica
Alexander NIx of Cambridge Analytica

Facebook shares all your ‘Likes’ by default – along with a lot of other information, such as where you live and (if you opt in) where you go.

MOST POPULAR TODAY ON YAHOO

Mark Zuckerberg made a New Year’s Resolution to address Facebook’s problems this year.

In a Facebook post, he said, ‘Facebook has a lot of work to do – whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.

‘We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.’