What Is Frances Haugen, Subject of The Social Reckoning, Up to Now?

In the five years since Frances Haugen peeled back the curtain on Facebook and the social media platform’s intentional spread of misinformation to its users, she’s become the subject of The Social Reckoning, a sequel to The Social Network (2010). The film aims to spotlight the company’s unraveling following the publication of a 2021 Wall Street Journal exposé about the website’s harmful algorithmic changes, and the case that would later unfold in front of Congress.

Haugen is played by Mikey Madison in the film. In the time between her casting and the film’s premiere, Madison revealed in an interview with Vogue that she and Haugen have communicated “a little bit over email.” She realized that despite their visual differences, Haugen “really just wants the story to be told.”

With The Social Reckoning, Haugen hopes that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is able to reflect on his actions and possibly choose a better future. “It’s very possible that Mark has learned to not see how distorted his world has become,” Haugen told The Verge. “My hope is that holding that mirror up, if he does ever watch the movie, that it gives him the gift of perspective, so he at least has a chance to choose.”

Who is Frances Haugen?

In 2021, The Wall Street Journal published The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation, which revealed the contents of thousands of confidential documents that examined the social media platform’s algorithmic changes designed to weaken responses to human trafficking, drug cartels, and vaccine misinformation.

Following the publication of the Wall Street Journal story, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security planned two hearings. Haugen initially remained anonymous in the case and fed information to Congress in private, but before being questioned in the hearings on Oct. 5, 2021, she came forward as the whistleblower on October 3 in an appearance on 60 Minutes.

During her interview, she revealed that she partially came forward because of her participation in Facebook’s Civil Integrity team—specifically designed to combat misinformation surrounding presidential elections—which was dissolved in December 2020 following former President Joe Biden’s election. “I wanted to be able to sleep at night,” she recalled, “free of the burden of carrying secrets I earnestly thought endangered the lives of tens of millions of people.”

The case inspired Haugen to create a nonprofit organization titled Beyond the Screen in 2022, designed to build “transparency, technical expertise, and accountability for social platforms.” She published her memoir, The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook, in 2023.

In August, Meta reached a landmark $18 billion settlement across the U.S. and its territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram have actively harmed children and engineered addictive behaviors for teenagers. Meta also called on YouTube, TikTok, and Snap to implement structures in their apps to prohibit addictive behavior in that demographic.

What does Frances Haugen do now?

In addition to her work with her nonprofit organization, Haugen occasionally works as a speaker, most recently in Barcelona, where she gave a presentation called “The Truth Behind the Algorithm,” which outlined the impacts of social media on children. At home, she still works as an engineer and has built a Discord server for her and Newman’s home. Haugen is also at work on a script for an AI house manager named Petra that’s capable of finding parking spaces and choosing groceries on Amazon, as she revealed in her ELLE interview, published in August 2026.

As for her personal life, Haugen is married to Alex Newman, the tech entrepreneur and engineer who co-founded HCaptcha. The bot-detection software works with companies like Shopify, Discord, and Snapchat to prove that users on the websites are human, not robots.

Haugen and Newman eloped in August 2022 after a year of dating and exchanged their vows in Puerto Rico on the beach they went to for their first snorkeling date. When she broke up with her boyfriend prior to meeting Newman, she rented a room at Newman’s home in Puerto Rico. “I rearranged the furniture in the living room so he’d have to sit next to me,” she told ELLE. The pair became official before Haugen had to leave in order to testify in front of Congress.

“I think part of why he finally got brave and asked me out was that I was going to become a public face,” she added. “He had one last chance to start dating me before I became the myth.” Haugen and Newman share an 18-month-old daughter and reside in Puerto Rico.

How do I watch The Social Reckoning?

The Social Reckoning was released in theaters on October 9. Get tickets here.