The man behind the world’s most popular social networking site, Facebook, is not doing too well these days. First there was that story about the employee interviewed by the New York Times, and now Mark Zuckerberg is coming under the gun again due to some instant messages obtained by SAI, in which the founder and CEO of Facebook called the people who trust him, “Dumb f*cks.”

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

Now, we all say stupid things when we’re young, and this exchange apparently happened in the early days, when Facebook was just getting off the ground, and he was 19-years old.

Still, it goes a long way toward revealing Zuckeberg’s stance on privacy, which has come under question as of late with the social networking site exploding all over the web.

Facebook released a statement yesterday, after first refusing to comment on the matter.

“The privacy and security of our users’ information is of paramount importance to us.  We’re not going to debate claims from anonymous sources or dated allegations that attempt to characterize Mark’s and Facebook’s views towards privacy.

Everyone within the company understands our success is inextricably linked with people’s trust in the company and the service we provide. We are grateful people continue to place their trust in us.  We strive to earn that trust by trying to be open and direct about the evolution of the service and sharing information on how the 400 million people on the service can use the available settings to control where their information appears.”

With Facebook coming under fire due to its constant change and inconsistency on privacy (their privacy statement is now longer than the United States Constitution), these messages by the now 25-year old Mark Zuckerberg aren’t going to do much in the way of earning people’s trust. It seems like Facebook is having to put out one fire after another these days, and that can only be good news to the folks at Diaspora, who are working on an open-source alternative to Facebook which is set to launch in September.