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The 2021 Facebook leak changed everything. Join us as we break down the real story behind "The Social Reckoning," exploring the explosive documents that exposed Facebook's unethical practices, Frances Haugen's courageous whistleblowing, Mark Zuckerberg's controversial rebrand to Meta, and how it all led to one of the most anticipated biopics in years!
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00:00Do you have an interest in social media?
00:02Not even a little bit. Look, I'm an investigative reporter,
00:05and that guy and this company are playing an unprecedented role in our lives.
00:09Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're reviewing the fallout from Facebook's infamous 2021 leak,
00:16culminating in the release of the biopic The Social Reckoning on October 9th, 2026.
00:22Did you know this was happening?
00:24I want the big story, and then I want the bigger story.
00:28Ben Mesrick's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires told a messy underdog story about the early days of Facebook.
00:36Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's film adaptation The Social Network was a monumental event in 2010.
00:43It grossed over $200 million worldwide, won three Academy Awards,
00:48and is hailed as a landmark in modern American cinema.
00:52You don't even know what the thing is yet.
00:54How big it can get, how far it can go.
01:06David Fincher's stylish direction was certainly a landmark in showing how a wordy capitalist coming of age
01:12and legal drama could be a nail-biting epic.
01:15But 16 years later, Sorkin is making the sequel without Fincher.
01:19What social media was in 2010 when The Social Network came out,
01:24and certainly what it was in the mid-aughts when Facebook was invented is very different than what it is
01:33now.
01:34The Social Reckoning instead carries a more solemn tone in response to shifting public perceptions about meta-platforms.
01:40Formerly, Facebook Inc., the film positions the turning point at a 2021 document leak which exposed many of the company's
01:49unethical business practices.
01:50We have 102 hours to get everything.
01:53Evidence of drug cartels.
01:56And a study that hasn't been made public on Instagram and teen mental health.
02:00The stakes are high enough in the narrative of The Social Reckoning.
02:04So let's get a preview of the topic at hand so that you can better enjoy the filmmaking and understand
02:09the weight of the story.
02:11I don't want to get the stat wrong, but it's about a third of American adults get their news from
02:17Facebook.
02:17That is very dangerous.
02:21You know, we're no longer agreeing that the sky is blue and 2 plus 2 equals 4.
02:26And people are living their lives online.
02:30The Facebook Files.
02:32In May 2021, tens of thousands of documents leaked to media outlets from Facebook Inc.
02:38The Wall Street Journal broke the story in September with the multi-format series The Facebook Files.
02:44Among the findings was that the company relaxed penalties against high-profile users and enabled COVID-19 misinformation.
02:52This was partly because such content spiked user engagement on their social media platforms.
02:57What Facebook has essentially done and she has exposed that they were aware of is play with our emotions, play
03:05with our psychologies, play with our anxieties.
03:08Those are the raw materials that fuels Facebook's attempts to be a digital empire.
03:15Internal reviews implicated these platforms in the distortion of mental health and adolescent development, the proliferation of extremist propaganda and
03:23abuses of power.
03:25The documents also reveal the decision to bury these studies.
03:28The overall picture we get is that Facebook did not action on the many, many dozens of suggestions to improve
03:35its platform because many of those suggestions would have sacrificed growth.
03:40They would have sacrificed key metrics like engagement that Mark Zuckerberg really cares about.
03:46Facebook would later claim that the reporting overrepresented shortcomings in the company's operational responses.
03:51Still, that barely scratches the surface of troubling practices that continued to unfold in months of journalistic and legal action.
03:59This dealt a devastating blow to the public's already dwindling trust in Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
04:06But who was to blame for this corruption?
04:08You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd.
04:13And I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that that won't be true.
04:18It'll be because you're an ass.
04:21User data.
04:23The person to blame for the Facebook leak revealed her identity on 60 Minutes in October 2021.
04:29Harvard-educated data and business expert Frances Haugen joined the company in 2019 as a product manager,
04:36helming their civic integrity team.
04:39Her stated objective was to crack down on misinformation after a friend was radicalized by social media.
04:45Like, they basically said, oh good, we made it through the election.
04:47There wasn't riots.
04:48We can get rid of civic integrity now.
04:50Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection.
04:53And when they got rid of civic integrity, it was the moment where I was like,
04:59I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.
05:05She wound up quitting in May 2021 with pictures and documents that she shared with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff
05:13Horwitz.
05:13Her attorneys also filed eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission under whistleblower protection.
05:20Haugen, Horwitz, and many others exposed systemic corruption within Facebook Inc.
05:26Of course, most painted CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the villain.
05:30Including the president, but others as well, with repeated rhetoric over time, saying that the election was rigged and encouraging
05:39people to organize,
05:41I think that those people bear the primary responsibility as well.
05:44And that was the point that I was making.
05:45I understand that, but your platforms supercharge that.
05:49The undeniably gifted creator of Facebook was already criticized for his fickle image and history of intellectual property disputes.
05:57The legal drama The Social Network further popularized this reputation.
06:01The public was nonetheless stunned by the scope of his company's malpractice, as well as their response to the exposure.
06:07There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook.
06:14And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.
06:19Fallout at Facebook.
06:21As a consortium of top media outlets picked up where the Facebook files left off, litigation followed.
06:26The U.S. Senate held rare bipartisan hearings on consumer protection and ethical use of social media algorithms.
06:34State attorneys general expanded or initiated legal actions, particularly over Facebook Inc.'s active targeting of minors.
06:41Attorney generals from across the country expressed several concerns over the new version of Instagram,
06:47saying that social media can be harmful to the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children.
06:52Beyond the company's home country, nations around the world advanced consumer protections and lawsuits.
06:59The most notable was a $150 billion class action, which held social media accountable in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
07:07The plaintiff says that while the persecution of the Muslim minority continued for years,
07:13the picture changed drastically once Facebook entered the fray in 2012.
07:17With an algorithm designed to promote polarizing content,
07:21it helped radicalize users in Myanmar and fueled real-world violence.
07:26All the while, Facebook was losing active users at such a rapid rate that February 2022
07:31saw the sharpest one-day value drop in U.S. stock market history.
07:36And still, the company closed the previous year with a 35% increase in profit.
07:42They note that advertising revenue growth in the second quarter was driven by a 47% increase in average price
07:49per ad,
07:49a 6% increase in the number of ads delivered.
07:52But they warned that in the third and fourth quarter, we expect year-over-year total revenue growth rates
07:57to decelerate significantly on a sequential basis as we lap periods of increasingly strong growth.
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08:21Into the metaverse.
08:23In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook, Inc.'s rebrand to Meta Platforms, Inc.
08:29We've gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video.
08:35But this isn't the end of the line.
08:37The next platform and medium will be even more immersive,
08:41an embodied internet where you're in the experience, not just looking at it.
08:45And we call this the metaverse.
08:47This was widely viewed as the company attempting to distance itself from a besmirched brand with an image of reinvention.
08:53Zuckerberg framed the move as simply disentangling the company from one product
08:58to promote its other enterprises.
09:00Either way, media coverage of the rebrand soon eclipsed the leak.
09:04This is totally part of their vision for the future of computing.
09:07And that's why the name change is happening, not a distraction from everything else.
09:12But is it really?
09:14I mean, it can be seen as a distraction, right?
09:16We're talking about it.
09:17We're not talking about the problems at Facebook.
09:19We're talking about the name change right now.
09:20Meta regained its former fiscal glory in just over a year through its advertising business,
09:25corporate restructuring, and $40 billion in share buybacks.
09:30Market confidence was further reinvigorated by greater investment in technology subsidiaries like reality labs.
09:37Developments in industrial and consumer artificial intelligence were particularly successful.
09:43However, Meta has had trouble meeting promises to address the social media issues
09:47that were largely driven by AI-powered algorithms.
09:50As Meta AI became more sophisticated, so too did these issues.
09:55In early 2026, they streamlined, laying off around 8,000 employees,
10:00around 10% of their workforce, while moving another 7,000 into the new AI division.
10:05And what do they have to show for it so far outside of exciting the shareholders?
10:10Products like Muse Image that everyone hated so much
10:12that the backlash immediately sent them back to the drawing board.
10:15Five years.
10:16Life looks much different, at least for the parties who broke the Facebook files.
10:21The leader of the Wall Street Journal project, Jeff Horwitz,
10:25further detailed his investigation in a 2023 book.
10:28It was only possible because Facebook, Meta, brought in a whole bunch of extremely smart people,
10:35told them to work on things that were clearly societally important, where lives were at stake.
10:41I asked them for solutions, they came up with solutions, and then Meta said,
10:45thanks, but we don't really want to do that.
10:47Broken Code would be the core source material in screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's sequel to The Social Network.
10:53Whistleblower Frances Haugen also wrote the memoir The Power of One,
10:57but has prioritized consultancy and advocacy since founding the non-profit Beyond the Screen.
11:03She feels that the social media industry has largely worsened its public safety problem since the Facebook leak.
11:10Facebook has established a history of, I hate to like be so damning,
11:15but they keep lying to the public.
11:17Like, omissions and lies seem to be the pattern at Facebook.
11:20And I think unless there is a legally mandated process,
11:24I don't think we can trust what the results of it will be.
11:26Five years after Mark Zuckerberg's net worth plummeted from around $140 billion,
11:31one noticeable difference in his life is that he's worth over $200 billion.
11:37Metaplatforms remains one of the most profitable companies in the world.
11:41With help from a boom in the AI industry, it's long led.
11:45Its public reputation, however, continues to decline.
11:48We had the head of Instagram talking about how he doesn't necessarily think that the tools that people use
11:53to create content that you see on Instagram should matter,
11:57that AI should be viewed as something like a video editing tool that you use.
12:01That's not what I'm hearing from users who are pushing back significantly to AI-generated content.
12:08Screen time.
12:09The story of Facebook has gotten much more cinematic since the social network came out in 2010.
12:14Thus, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin announced in 2024
12:17that he was writing a companion film about Francis Haugen's leak.
12:22And, you know, you've called it a David and Goliath story.
12:24And I'm curious, what is the story that you are telling in this movie?
12:28Well, it is a David and Goliath story if Goliath invited us all to a party and then spiked the
12:34punch.
12:35Academy Award winner Mikey Madison heads a star-studded cast as Haugen,
12:40with two-time Emmy winner Jeremy Allen White playing Jeff Horwitz.
12:44Sorkin replaces David Fincher as director,
12:46having earned high praise for self-directing Molly's Game,
12:50The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Being the Ricardos.
12:53But the most visible absence has to be Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg.
12:58I think we should just be friends.
12:59I don't want friends.
13:01I was just being polite.
13:02I have no intention of being friends with you.
13:03Mark Zuckerberg is instead being played by Jeremy Strong,
13:07who has become a fixture in American anti-capitalist cinema since HBO's Succession.
13:12Bring me more in the interactive and digital space.
13:15Bring me franchisable IP.
13:16Bring me a thousand lifeboats.
13:19Bring me a f***ing armada of eyeballs.
13:21This signals that the harshly named The Social Reckoning
13:24will be less morally ambiguous in its depiction of Zuckerberg's vision.
13:28After all, the market for hit pieces against it is hot right now.
13:32His brilliance is undeniable, and it got way out of hand.
13:37It's gone completely out of control.
13:44Before we continue, check out this single from Sound Mojo's album Balance,
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14:09The release of The Social Reckoning coincidentally follows Meta's August 2026 legal settlement
14:16with 51 U.S. jurisdictions.
14:17The company must pay over $17 billion over the next 10 years
14:22and implement safety measures for underage social media users.
14:27Screen time limits, restricting use on Instagram and Facebook for kids under 18 to two hours a day.
14:34Fewer notifications.
14:36They will be disabled overnight and during school hours.
14:39Nightly mutes.
14:41Apps will be blocked from midnight to 6 a.m.
14:44Harmful features off by default.
14:46It took five years to reach this first major step toward remedying the business malpractice outlined in the Facebook files.
14:53But the documents also showed that the company can't reliably account for the volume of users on its platform.
14:59The prospect of human oversight being further replaced by AI is another cause for concern.
15:052026 saw dozens of countries propose extreme regulation of social media platforms
15:10that pose a credible threat to public safety.
15:13Earlier this year, in fact, the government was rejecting efforts by the conservatives and liberal democrats
15:17to introduce just this kind of ban.
15:19The government said that it wanted time to consider its own consultation.
15:22Well, the consultation that they launched came back with overwhelming support from those who carried out its survey,
15:28parents especially, into this sort of ban.
15:31And that is why the government has now acted.
15:33Aaron Sorkin's knack for complex storytelling isn't likely to worsen views on Mark Zuckerberg like it did in the social
15:39network.
15:40So maybe the social reckoning can better contextualize problems that needed to be addressed long before the 2021 Facebook leak.
15:47How hard is it to get powerful people to change something they're doing?
15:51You have to cause pain.
15:52You have to make it hurt.
15:53How are you feeling about the social reckoning and reckonings on the horizon for meta platforms?
15:59Scroll to the comments below and post.