Facebook has very Coasian bounty program for security researchers (i.e. hackers) who find bugs and other “vulnerabilities” on Facebook: it pays people a minimum of $500 USD to report such bugs to Facebook instead of using them or selling them on the black market. But when Khalil Shreateh, a security researcher from Palestine, found a major flaw in Facebook (a bug that let him post stuff to other people’s Walls) and reported it to Facebook (twice), he was completely ignored by Facebook.

Because he was ignored, Mr Shreateh then used the newly-discovered bug to post a message directly to Mark Zuckerburg‘s Wall. In response, Mr Zuckerburg not only suspended Mr Shreateh’s Facebook account; Zuckerburg also refused to pay him the bounty on the pretext that Mr Shreateh violated Facebook’s terms of service.

Come on, Zuck, give the man his bounty. He earned it.

(Here is one version of this story, and for you geeks, here is Mr Shreateh’s technical explanation of the bug he discovered.)