The Oscar-winning movie The Social Network told the story of Facebook's rise. Sixteen years later, The Social Reckoning explores what happened afterward.
The new film from writer-director Aaron Sorkin, opening in theaters Oct. 9, stars Anora's Mikey Madison as Facebook (now Meta) whistleblower Frances Haugen, who disclosed tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents.
Succession's Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network), while The Bear's Jeremy Allen White stars as Jeff Horwitz, one of the journalists who investigated Haugen's documents.
The documents became the basis for the Facebook Files, a series of Wall Street Journal investigations into what the company's own research, according to the Journal, showed about problems on its platforms, including Instagram's impact on some teenage girls and concerns that its algorithms could amplify divisive content.
Haugen was initially anonymous but eventually revealed herself as the source of the documents. But why did she decide to speak out against her former employer, and what was in the Facebook Files? Here's the real-life story behind The Social Reckoning.
Haugen is a data scientist and former Facebook product manager who became one of the company's most prominent whistleblowers in 2021.
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