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Mark Zuckerberg: “Please Resign” (2010)
- enteeentee 4y ago“We are a company that promotes openness and transparency“ except we aren’t.
- augusto-moura 4y agoI think the post needs a [2010] tag, the article might be recent but the email is more than a decade old
- georgehill 4y agoupdated
- eddieroger 4y agoEven with the tag, this feels click-bait-y given the current layoff trend in tech. This article is about a leaked, false story, not about people quitting as a result of economic issues.
- arjvik 4y ago"If you don't resign, we will almost certainly find out who you are anyway" Is he really confident of this?
- outside1234 4y agoHe runs a network that basically builds a East German style profile on people. Wouldn’t doubt in the least he has best in class capabilities to track this down.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI agree with the first half, but I imagine Facebook is a kindergarten of espionage compared to actual spy agencies.
- bornfreddy 4y agoI always assumed it is a front for actual spy agencies? (the same as Google, MS and probably even Apple, to be fair)
- frankreyes 4y agoYes. India is one example https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-forced-twitter-put-agent-payroll-whistleblower-says-2022-08-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-forced-twitter-put...
- runlaszlorun 4y agoI have a hunch it’s the other way around these days.
- armatav 4y agoFalse - today none of these companies can even accurately track granular performance metrics in a way that correlates it with the company’s bottom line. Hence if they can’t do that, he’s gotta send an email about it. Tesla even had to send encoded spaces in letters to get leakers. If you can’t measure what’s going right, you sure as hell can’t measure what’s going wrong.
- helsontaveras18 4y agoFacebooks internal auditing of employee data access is world class. Not sure about what it was in 2010. And your remark about performance metrics is irrelevant to the question of, who accessed this sensitive company data?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tmpz22 4y agoCalling something "world class" reminds me of "military grade". They've invested millions (billions?) at it and are probably better then most organizations outside maybe intelligence agencies (intelligence agencies sometimes being an oxy-moron in their own right) - overall I hate that facebooks internal data policies are referenced as a laurel that can be slept on.
- ChuckMcM 4y agoAs I recall they did fire at least one person over this. Google had done something similar with the person (who turned out to be a contractor vs a full time employee) who leaked photos of the first Android phone.
- paxys 4y agoEverything happening within a corporate network is tracked, so yeah unless the leaker was going through extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks it's only ever a question of how much effort you are willing to put in to find them.
- reactspa 4y agoSeems like a case of burnout.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zinodaur 4y agoI love it! So petulant and conceited. It's great to hear what these CEOs are like without the Corpo-speak PR filtering system
- d1str0 4y agoTitle should mention this is from 2010.
- endisneigh 4y agoWith language models I won’t be surprised if it’s possible to create semantically equivalent but syntactically different text such that you can uniquely identify leakers. Then you could send these out in a coordinated fashion to identify which group, if not person, is leaking. The message says that they will find the leaker, but I doubt it (of course this is from 2010, so if they were found they have been for a while now).
- nonethewiser 4y agoIt’s already been done at Tesla with spaces.
- daydream 4y agoThe basic technique is much older than that, dating to the Cold War era and likely even before.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 7373737373 4y agoFrom the Alpaca report (https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html): > we watermark all the model outputs using the method described in Kirchenbauer et al. 2023, so that others can detect (with some probability) whether an output comes from Alpaca 7B https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.10226 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.10226 > We propose a watermarking framework for proprietary language models. The watermark can be embedded with negligible impact on text quality, and can be detected using an efficient open-source algorithm without access to the language model API or parameters. The watermark works by selecting a randomized set of "green" tokens before a word is generated, and then softly promoting use of green tokens during sampling. We propose a statistical test for detecting the watermark with interpretable p-values
- thisiswater 4y agoThere is no reason this couldn't be watermarked with the individual user, though the if it detects them probabilisticly then it could be difficult to make the case to take action on inferences made.
- MattGaiser 4y agoDid they ever find out?
- tyingq 4y agoIt's interesting that he didn't consider the effect of all his employees seeing the email "from:" and "subject:" sitting in the inbox. That's a tense few moments before opening it for people.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoYou don’t think he considered that?
- iLoveOncall 4y agoThat's... exactly what he was going for? He wanted this email to have a lasting impact and to make people afraid of ever sharing confidential information. The subject was perfect.
- happytoexplain 4y agoYou can have a lasting impact without doing something that makes you also look like you don't give a shit about your employees. If I see my employer purposefully try to make me feel for a moment that he was demanding I resign, my opinion of him would immediately shift to "he's either immoral or has a more concrete psychological issue." I think most people probably would feel that way, but there are social politics at play in this case causing people to be unwilling or unable to make an honest attempt to put themselves in the situation.
- foogazi 4y agoI would expect FB employees to know how email works I’d open an email from the CEO without reading the subject tbh
- toast0 4y agoI wouldn't, it's probably phishing.
- danw1979 4y agoI’m chuckling at the fact Mark thought they had “too much social good to build” to be dealing with leaks. What happened, did things like this keep distracting them ?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sitzkrieg 4y agono i think they realized they're an advertising business from even this early on
- ninth_ant 4y agoYou are absolutely correct that during this time, they (accurately) predicted that targeted advertising would give them a tremendous advantage and become lucrative. However, folks there also sincerely believed that authentic identities would curb some of the toxicity that was being seen on the anonymous internet. That being exposed to diverse perspectives from friends could be an Avenue for increased tolerances. That giving common people a platform would be a net benefit to the world (Arab Spring was around this time). In hindsight, much of that was wrong, but that doesn’t change the sincerity of the belief in that moment.
- amelius 4y agoBuilding a phone would actually be a good move. There is just too little competition in this space and the only two players are hiding behind the duopoly so they don't have to deal with competition laws. And for Facebook it means that they don't have to comply with AppStore rules.
- pavlov 4y agoZuck dabbled in a phone platform, saw Microsoft’s $10B+ failure at building the third smartphone ecosystem despite deep pockets and a product that critics liked, and decided he would drop the phone and instead get a head start on the next revolution. Ten years in, the company has been renamed, numerous variations of hardware and software have been tried, and all the pieces for a platform are theoretically in place. Yet users seem to only show up for occasional fitness and horror games. But Apple is entering the headset market this year, which could be a turning point eventually. Can Quest 3 be like Windows 3.0? Seems unlikely, but at least it’s interesting to see these giant companies push so hard for a new interaction paradigm.
- Nextgrid 4y agoMicrosoft only has itself to blame. They reset the ecosystem 3 times. First with Windows Phone 7 (no backwards-compatibility with Windows Mobile 6 and prior), then with Windows Phone 8, and finally with Windows 10. If you're already struggling to get developer mindshare, the last thing you should be doing is making backwards-incompatible changes every other year and force everyone to start from scratch. A Facebook phone would have many problems, but I'm sure they would at least not be as stupid as Microsoft was.
- aierou 4y agoThat is plainly what they are trying to accomplish with VR.
- curiousObject 4y agoIf an employee admits leaking they could be sued by Facebook. I assume Zuckerberg understands that legal jeopardy so he did not honestly expect anyone to comply with this rant. It’s merely a position statement
- quickthrower2 4y agoIt depends how many people resign per week (how many employees did they have?) but merely resigning may not raise flags. That said I wonder if there was anyone about to resign, but held off, to avoid it looking like this was the reason?
- curiousObject 4y ago> I wonder if there was anyone about to resign, but held off, to avoid it looking like this was the reason? It’s an entertaining idea, but also sounds like a genuine possibility
- bobleeswagger 4y agoUsually I join in on the hatred for someone like Zuck, but this was a well articulated email that addressed the issue directly. I hope if someone did leak information intentionally that they did resign. Can't feel good to be called out amongst tens of thousands of others and know it was you.
- throwawaysalome 4y agoWhat? If you can't handle that, then just leave. Regardless of how correct the premise, this is language unbecoming of a CEO.
- quocanh 4y agoDo people on social media believe that all employees should freely share confidential internal information? Or is it that this is an email from a frustrated person and no one should ever share "bad feelings"? Or is it that CEOs should never be aggressive and "how dare he punish someone who broke the rules"? Am I crazy for thinking that this is completely reasonable in context?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- woodruffw 4y agoIt’s reasonable to not want your employees to share internal information. It’s perhaps less reasonable to put an entire company on blast because one person violated that expectation.
- ok_computer 4y agoThe sentiment is totally ok to think and feel. But it makes you look like an insecure loser to blast the entire directory with you latest grievance. If you want to project power as a ceo you have the communication task delegated to someone who specializes in company communications and information security.
- ghaff 4y agoYeah. The head of corporate comms or someone in that chain of command would be very justified in sending something along of the lines of: This was shared externally from our internal company meeting. I'd like to remind everyone that keeping the information shared in these meetings confidential allows us to be more open with all our employees. etc. There may be times for the CEO to send the message but, especially at a high visibility company, it's probably inevitable it will become more of a personal thing.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoFacebook was a much, much, much smaller (like 30-60x) smaller company back then.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zuzatm 4y agoI was an intern in FB in 2010 and I distinctly remember getting this email. My full-time buddies, some of which included very senior engineers who often work with Mark, mentioned the got the shivers when they saw the title and thought they just got booted :)
- m1117 4y agoIsn't this publicity good? I think whoever leaked that to press gave Facebook a favor. He could've twitted, "Fake news, we're not building a phone" and that's it.
- quickthrower2 4y agoFrom the email: > 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. They think we're building a phone to compete with them rather than building integrations to make their phones better.
- bornfreddy 4y agoHowever, it mentions lesking internal communications - which indicates that the leaked information was actually legit at the time, even if nothing came out of it.
- w_for_wumbo 4y agoI can't help but thinking whenever I see Facebook about the change that we could see in the world if the platform were able to prioritize connection and social cohesion. Enabling people to see things from new perspectives and discuss things freely and openly. There's so much power for good in the platform, which is being held back by the need to return a profit.
- sberens 4y agoJust to note, 3 years later they did release a phone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First
- ricardobeat 4y agoThey did not release a phone, they developed a custom Android skin that could be adopted by partner telcos.
- hsjqllzlfkf 4y agoOf course they did. If the leak didn't have some truth to it, he wouldn't have been so upset about the leak.
- twostorytower 4y agoIt's literally not a phone. Facebook didn't build or design any hardware. It's exactly what Mark said, an interface layer (Launcher) for Android, and it came bundled with this HTC phone.
- frankreyes 4y agoThey didn't. HTC is an independent company working as a business partner with Facebook. Just what Mark said.
- mabbo 4y agoAround the same time, summer of 2010, TechCrunch also reported that Google was making a ChromeOS tablet, which was going to be released in the next few weeks. I was interning on the team building the first ever touch screen for ChromeOS, in Waterloo, ON. We had barely gotten anything working yet. It was all super early days stuff. We all laughed at the article and thought nothing more of it. I think TechCrunch was just basically throwing darts and seeing what hit.
- elkos 4y ago> If we don't, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world. I work at a non-profit and wouldn't dare to utter these words to any employee. I understand believing what you preach, but actually saying you work on "changing the world" in an internal email seems very problematic? Is it just me?
- mabbo 4y agoWell, to be fair he didn't specify that they were changing the world in a positive way.
- ditonal 4y agoHe actually did when he says they have too much “social good” to build.
- ramraj07 4y agoThey did absolutely change the world in a significant manner though. Time and again! Just not in the direction Mark openly hoped for.
- irishloop 4y agoHonestly think this is quite common at the CEO level. I swear it's like a requirement, founders have to be a little bit deluded into thinking they're changing the world and not just... starting a business.
- gretch 4y agoThere’s a survival selection process. The ceo founders who did not believe it in their bones failed very early on. Because honestly you have to be a little bit insane to take on that much risk and uncertainty (not to say it’s a good thing, the other 999/1000 who also believed don’t go anywhere)
- chitowneats 4y agoFacebook most certainly changed the world. The result was not good from my perspective. You can justify phrases like "social good" in a lot of different ways. Which is why you should always be skeptical of such claims.
- hsjqllzlfkf 4y ago> If you believe that it's ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave. ( ... ) We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook.
- charles_f 4y agoReminds me of an executive who keept claiming openness and asking for feedback, then snapped everytime they received some.
- ccooffee 4y ago"Ever" is an exceptionally poor word choice in Zuckerberg's email. Imagining a scenario where something bad is being done (intentionally or not) isn't that difficult. I believe there are circumstances that NOT whistleblowing would be a moral failing. "But no realistic situation would require you to leak" is not a good strawman defense for Zuck's word choices. There is a broad history of whistleblowing in America being the necessary first step to unravel bad things. You don't even have to leave Silicon Valley to find Theranos, the Google/Apple/Facebook no-poach collusion, etc.
- bilekas 4y ago> We have too much social good to build to have to deal with this. I did laugh a bit out loud reading this.
- imranq 4y agoMaybe they define social good as the collapse of democracy, and the commodification of attention?
- anonymous344 4y agowhy is hacker news full of clickbait headlines?
- upon_drumhead 4y agoyou clicked in and engaged, which is what the author/submitter wanted
- vandahm 4y agoI've never submitted anything to HN, but I think they want you to use the original title of the article, which is what the submitter did.
- andrewmutz 4y agoThis post feels a bit like "the dress" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress) Half the commenters in here are saying this a completely reasonable thing for him to say, and the other half are saying this is completely unacceptable for a CEO to send out
- mepian 4y agoYes, I think this post is a great test for, uhh, certain personality traits.
- __turbobrew__ 4y agoI guess I’m a sociopath
- gretch 4y agoHonestly people just have different values. And that’s totally okay. There’s lot of places to work and live and we don’t all have to homogeneous aspire to a single model or culture or behavior. I like this kind of direct messaging and dislike the weak corporate messaging of today’s landscape. “Moving on to a bright future..” and then 2 paragraphs of meaningless fluff before finally finding out that there’s a product line being shut down or there was a security breach.
- hardware2win 4y agoIt seems reasonable tbf
- yalogin 4y agoWell, looking back, would they have been better off had they built a phone? Tough to say, Mark doesn’t know how to build a device. However may be he could have made the device free in exchange for reaping all of user’s data. May be not. It would cost a lot of money and probably put google at a crossroads because apple and Facebook would then be positioned on either end of the spectrum with google not knowing what to do. I would have loved to see mark try to make a phone instead of Bezos.
- kazinator 4y agoSummary: someone in the world spread a false rumor about Facebook, and Zuckerberg stupidly called it a leak, assuming someone one the inside is responsible, and should be let go.
- susrev 4y ago> Confidential—Do Not Share > We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook. The irony of these two statements being separated by three paragraphs made me lol
- Orangeair 4y agoHaving worked at a different FAANG (and more recently than 2010), I'm kind of on Mark's side with this one. It got to the point where I worked that anything that executives said would be leaked pretty much immediately, so we hardly ever got any information ahead of when the general public did. From what people with longer tenures said, there used to be more information shared with the company at large, but they had to curtail it due to the constant leaks. Obviously I don't mind people leaking things that are cause for serious concern (i.e. whistleblowers), but yeah it results in kind of a crappy company culture when the people setting the direction for the company are afraid to share their plans with the people actually doing the work. Maybe that's just inevitable for a company with a hundred thousand employees, though.
- ignoramous 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- nichohel 4y agoCould you explain how this relates to this discussion? I understand The Tragedy of the Commons and I don't see how that concept is relevant here.
- glenstein 4y agoI assume that they are suggesting that free and open dialogue is shared "resource" that is exploited via the choice of individual actors to engage in leaks, thereby contributing to the depletion of a resource that they themselves would benefit from. However, it's only applicable at an extremely general level, and if you wanted to you could draw a connection between this kind of article and any number of new stories, if you're willing to stretch the terms enough. If it were up to me, comment section etiquette would discourage links to generic Wikipedia articles like logical fallacies, Dunning Kruger effect, or more or less familiar economic concepts unless they had some strong connection to the article.
- jmull 4y ago“Let's commit to maintaining complete confidentiality about the company—no exceptions.” Zuck sounds like he has no idea what he’s doing?
- vcryan 4y agoThe most interesting part to me was the "change the world" rhetoric. I'm always curious to what extent people in positions like Zuck believe their own bs.
- ignoramous 4y agoFacebook aside, Mark did buy WhatsApp and Instagram, and both those products have indeed changed the world. Personally, I like their work in the Telecom sector: Evenstar (open RAN) and TIP (https://telecominfraproject.com https://telecominfraproject.com)
- nickstinemates 4y ago> I'm always curious to what extent people in positions like Zuck believe their own bs. Fully. At least where I worked.
- nl 4y agoIt's pretty difficult to argue that Facebook didn't change the world (for better or worse).
- nixass 4y agoDid they ever find the person?
- kepler1 4y agoWell, I mean in a sense it's a laughable game that companies and their executives (and their employees) play, isn't it? There's a constant battle going on, and not just a little because of the company's own choices, don't you think? Company X wants to keep plans and products confidential and internal, yet at the same time, wants to achieve world domination and penetration of its products to all the world's users. Somewhat inevitable to be in conflict, these goals, especially when you start to have on the order of 100,000 people you hire to be able to take over the world. And I get the frustration, but not the outrage of executives. You created this human-based organization to power your capitalist (in the best sense) ambitions -- don't imagine that you have full control over it, especially if your past actions have created a culture that doesn't trust your publicly stated intentions fully. And just to caricature even more, boo-hoo, my problem is that the media got told my huge company is building a phone, but we're not. Cry me a river. It's the greatest injustice humanity has ever experienced.
- quasarj 4y agoI don't understand - if they weren't building a mobile phone, then there was no leak, right?
- tsinapah 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hgsgm 4y ago> We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook. 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 the confidential information we share internally. That's quite hypocritical. "We make our money spying on people. Spying will not be tolerated."
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoBut if that's not true, how is that a leak? Anyone could have invented that lie.
- ravagat 4y agoNicely put email. I hope folks don't disregard that when you're in a leadership position this is one of the better moves to make especially as an "initial" move. Different positions mean different contexts mean different actions.
- jaitsu 4y agoThese two sentences are at completed odds with each other: 1. "We are a company that promotes openness and transparency" 2. "Let's commit to maintaining complete confidentiality about the company—no exceptions"
- dgellow 4y agoHe’s saying that the company is internally open and transparent. But does not share confidential information to the outside world. There is no contradiction here.