Mark Zuckerberg Thought Early Facebook Users Were ‘Dumb F*cks’

One gets the sense the clock is ticking on Facebook’s fast and loose ways of forcing people to share information about themselves they might not otherwise wish to make public. The top story on Yahoo today is a cautionary warning about seven things you need to stop doing on Facebook now. The tech world, and my Facebook feed, are frequently filled with instructions on how to outmaneuver Facebook and get your information behind a secure wall….something Facebook has made increasingly hard. And just the other day news broke that the company had hired a former U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairman to represent it before the FTC. Facebook is being treated more and more like a predator by its users.

Which may explain the immediately negative reaction to an old IM chat that was apparently leaked to Business Insider earlier today.

According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at HarvardZuck:
Just ask.Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?Zuck: People just submitted it.Zuck: I don’t know why.Zuck: They “trust me”Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Past is prologue? It doesn’t bode well for Facebook’s current reputation that a lot of people will read a five year old IM college chat and see what feels like a current business theory at work.