Comment by dejb
15 years ago
> It's not like he could have known that in a few years it would have become one of the world's biggest web sites.
That's the exact reason a lot of people see this as such an insight into his true nature. The true mark of character is not to behave morally when you know you are being watched. Any intelligent liar or psychopath can pull that off. The true mark is what you do when you don't think the information will spread.
Of course if he did still harbor the same underlying attitude now, one wouldn't expect some youthful prank if and when he decided to 'fuck them'. You have to imagine there will be many times when Facebook will have to decide between the honoring the trust of their users versus some other gain. When these decision are made that underlying attitude may still be calling the shots.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that as he was typing these IM's I don't think he was rubbing his hands and twiddling his mustache while cackling madly. There seem to be two camps of people on this issue: people who think he's a natural sociopath and was plotting on how to manipulate and cheat people from inside the womb (people who don't think personalities and opinions can change), and people who think he's probably just making a self-deprecating joke at a time in his life when this project wasn't yet as serious as it is now.
I'd rather picture the guy as an (extremely) socially clueless but generally well-meaning person whose sense of humor might be a little off. Sure he's had his privacy slip-ups in the past but the kid is captaining completely uncharted waters with one hand and beating back thousands of influencers throwing fistfuls of money with the other. I suspect that if anyone on this board, including me, found themselves with the almost overnight success of Facebook on their hands it wouldn't be too hard to find some out-of-context IM's to smear them with either. Let he who is without sin, blah blah blah.
Edit: To be clear I'm referring just to these IM's and how they relate to his running FB today, not to whatever history he may or may not have had with other developers. I don't know enough of that backstory to comment.