The Social Reckoning: When Whistleblowing Brings No Change
On October 9th The Social Reckoning––the sort-of-sequel to the 2010 film The Social Network––hit theaters. The film is a biographical drama following investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz and now-former Facebook employee Frances Haugen as they worked on a story that became known as The Facebook Files.
The Facebook Files are a series of seventeen articles published by the Wall Street Journal demonstrating Facebook’s reluctance to fact-check or provide protections for users in fear that so-called “free speech restrictions” would cause user numbers to drop. The files include articles on teen mental health, drug cartels, and how the company’s algorithm fuels anger in its users, among other things.¹ Haugen, who had worked on the Civic Integrity team at Facebook, provided Horwitz with all of the internal documents that were used in the creation of the files. She was given protected whistleblower status, and has testified not only in front of the United States congress, but government bodies in England and France as well.²
In addition to the investigation, the film follows Mark Zuckerberg as he prepares for a witness testimony. These preparation scenes show Zuckerberg’s continued unwillingness to hinder any type of speech, including paid political ads promoting false facts. He claims that Facebook is not intended to act as any sort of moderator, but as a public forum for which people have the right to say what they want without repercussion. However, his preparations for the testimony are cut short, and the movie reveals that it is January 6th, 2021. The attack on the capitol has officially become a riot, and posts on Facebook are fueling the fire. What follows are chilling scenes showing him and his team watching as the attacks get worse and worse. Finally, after much urging from those around him, Zuckerberg makes the uncharacteristic decision to take down the posts from president Donald Trump, who was using the platform to urge the attackers on.³
After this, and after Haugen’s testimony, many lawsuits were brought against Facebook. Soon after The Facebook Files were released, Facebook changed its name to Meta, and installed third-party fact-checkers into their products. However, in 2025 Meta removed these and replaced them with Community Notes, which are similar to the fact checking system used by Elon Musk’ s X (formerly Twitter), and allows users to fact-check one another and provide context on posts without any intervention from Meta.⁴ Zuckerberg claimed that the third-party fact checkers were getting too “politically biased” and that they were now hindering speech. Meta’s restrictions on the types of content posted and discussed are minimal, and relies on users to determine whether or not something is truthful or problematic.⁵
Though the film itself is not the masterpiece that The Social Network is, The Social Reckoning provides a larger commentary on the nature of free speech and the role social media plays within it, and how concerns for free speech are being used by Meta as a scapegoat for wanting more users. While Haugen’s whistleblowing brought many of Facebook’s issues to light, there was ultimately little change, both within the law and the company.
Works Cited:
- Horwitz, Jeff. “The Facebook Files.” The Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039.
- Frances Haugen, www.franceshaugen.com/.
- Madison, Mikey, et al., actor. The Social Reckoning. Directed by Aaron Sorkin 2026.
- “How fact-checking works.” Meta, 7 Apr. 2025, transparency.meta.com/features/how-fact-checking-works/.
- “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes.” Meta, 7 Jan. 2025, about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/.