The 2010 drama “The Social Network,” about the origins of Facebook, won three Oscars and became a cultural sensation for the way it captured the ruthless business calculations and winner-take-all mind-set of tech bro culture.
So expectations for the sort-of sequel, “The Social Reckoning,” now in theaters, have been high. The film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (writer of the earlier film), chronicles the former Facebook engineer Frances Haugen’s effort in 2021 to hold the company, which has since rebranded as Meta, accountable for downplaying what it knew about the harmful impacts its social feeds were having on users.
The Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is played by Jeremy Strong, while Mikey Madison is Haugen. Jeremy Allen White plays the Wall Street Journal reporter she enlists to expose the secrets of the Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram.
Here’s what to know about the accusations and the company’s response.
What was Facebook accused of doing?
Prioritizing growth and profit over the safety of its users. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal documented a two-tier system that exempted some celebrities and politicians from standard content moderation rules, and revealed that the company was aware that Instagram was worsening body-image struggles among girls and that Facebook had a bigger vaccine misinformation problem than it let on, among other issues.
A Facebook spokesman responded in a tweet: “As The Wall Street Journal itself makes clear, we have a team of experts who help us uncover patterns of harmful behavior so we can disrupt it. We’ve got arguably more experts and resources dedicated to this work than any other consumer technology company in the world.”
What is the evidence?
Haugen shared more than 20,000 internal documents, research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management with the Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz. They became the basis for a bombshell investigative series that The Journal published in 2021, known as “The Facebook Files.”
How did Facebook respond?
Facebook began both a public relations and an internal campaign, arguing that the documents had been stolen and asserting that they presented a distorted view of the company’s research. Zuckerberg posted an open letter on the platform denying that Facebook had intentionally promoted polarizing or harmful content. And he defended the company’s internal research program, saying it had been designed to help address complex issues, not to conceal them.
Facebook also said that it was pausing development of an Instagram app tailored to children 13 and younger. And it had already begun adjusting the algorithm that drives its news feed ranking in an effort to reduce the spread of misinformation and violent content.
Who is Frances Haugen?
Haugen, a Harvard Business School graduate, was recruited to work at Facebook in 2019. As the lead product manager on the civic integrity team, she studied how Facebook’s algorithm promoted misinformation and was leveraged by foreign adversaries in propaganda campaigns.
But Facebook dissolved the team after the 2020 election, and a short time later, social media helped drive the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Haugen became concerned that Facebook and Instagram appeared to be prioritizing profit over public safety. Before leaving the company in May 2021, she copied thousands of pages of internal documents and shared them with The Wall Street Journal.
What was the fallout from the revelations?
Haugen testified before Congress, which opened investigations into Facebook and Instagram’s impact on teenagers’ mental health and Facebook’s operations in China, among other subjects.
The New Mexico attorney general, Raúl Torrez, filed a landmark child safety lawsuit against Meta in 2023 alleging that the company had misled users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and that lax protocols had allowed sexual predators to contact minors.
A judge later ordered Meta in August to pay penalties totaling nearly $1 billion and to revamp its platforms to make them safer for young users.
Meta said it would appeal the decision. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” Andy Stone, a company spokesman, said in a statement. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey filed a federal lawsuit against Meta claiming it had intentionally addicted young people to social media. The states sought roughly $200 billion in penalties and adjustments to the company’s platforms, but Meta reached a settlement of up to $17.1 billion in August that required it to make major changes over claims it endangered children with addictive platforms. Among other concessions, the company agreed to interrupt endless scrolling and to impose two-hour daily time limits on Instagram and Facebook.
Thousands of additional lawsuits have been filed by teenagers, school districts and attorneys general claiming that Meta’s platforms and features like infinite scroll have caused widespread harm.
Where is Haugen now?
After leaving Facebook, Haugen moved to Puerto Rico and founded a nonprofit organization, Beyond the Screen, which aims to make social media platforms safer and more transparent.
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