Facepalm: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg complained about company leaks during an all-hands meeting, only for the audio to leak online almost immediately. Sensing the irony, Meta's security chief issued a stern memo, warning that leakers would be fired. And in a twist that feels straight out of a sitcom, that memo leaked too.
The saga kicked off during Mark Zuckerberg's all-hands meeting with Meta employees on Thursday, where he vented about recent leaks exposing his private remarks to staff.
In an attempt to tighten control, HR made some changes. Questions that could be problematic if leaked were skipped, employees could no longer see ranked questions, and the comment section was disabled during the live stream.
Zuckerberg addressed these changes directly: "We try to be really open and then everything I say leaks. It sucks." He added that he would now be less transparent due to the leaks.
Ironically, those comments leaked almost immediately.
Enter Chief Information Security Officer Guy Rosen, who wasted no time issuing a stern warning. Less than an hour later, he declared that leakers would be "terminated" if identified, noting that some employees had already been fired for "exfiltrating sensitive documents."
In a memo obtained by The Verge, Rosen argued that leaks do more than compromise security – they demoralize teams and waste valuable time that should be spent advancing Meta's products, goals, and mission.
You can probably guess what happened next. Yes, this tough-talking memo leaked almost immediately.
The surge in leaks appears tied to Zuckerberg's growing ties with Donald Trump in recent months. In December, Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund, a stark reversal from its previously nonpartisan stance over the past decade.
This is the same company that banned Trump in 2021 after he allegedly incited the Capitol riot. Yet, by October 2024, Trump described his relationship with Zuckerberg as "much better."
So, will Meta ever fix its leaky faucet? At this rate, we'll probably just have to wait for the next leak to find out.
"Everything I say leaks," complains Mark Zuckerberg in a memo that was leaked
