When a Reporter's Big Story Becomes a Hollywood Movie

A reporter named Jeff Horwitz once helped a source sort through thousands of secret Facebook documents in a small rented condo in Puerto Rico. That work led to a major investigation called the Facebook Files. Now, a Hollywood film based on that investigation is hitting theaters, and Horwitz himself is one of the main characters — played by Emmy Award-winning actor Jeremy Allen White.

The Facebook Files was a series of news stories published by the Wall Street Journal. The stories revealed what the company behind Facebook, called Meta, knew about how its platform harmed young people. Meta's own researchers found that the app could be bad for teens' mental health, and the reports showed the company had not done enough to fix the problem.

The source who gave Horwitz the documents was a woman named Frances Haugen. She worked at Facebook before she decided to speak out. She secretly copied thousands of internal company files and shared them with Horwitz. Later, she testified before the United States Congress and became one of the most famous whistleblowers in tech history.

Horwitz first reached out to Haugen by sending messages to people on LinkedIn who had worked on a Facebook team focused on politics and elections. He wanted to find someone who could help him understand how Facebook chose what content people saw. Haugen responded a few weeks later, and the two began working together using burner phones to stay safe.

Before Haugen left Facebook, she invited Horwitz to Puerto Rico, where she was living. She spent her final weeks at the company learning as much as she could about what was happening inside Facebook. Horwitz watched over her shoulder and helped her figure out what information was most important — and sometimes ran out to get her snacks.

When the Facebook Files were published, Meta pushed back. The company said the documents were cherry-picked, meaning Haugen had chosen only the ones that made Facebook look bad. But the stories sparked investigations by state attorneys general across the country. Eventually, Meta agreed to pay between $12 billion and $18 billion to settle lawsuits over harm to children on its platform.

Horwitz later wrote a book about the investigation called 'Broken Code.' The book caught the attention of famous Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the script for 'The Social Reckoning.' Sorkin invited Horwitz to Los Angeles several times to talk about the investigation, its key documents, and what it was like when Horwitz first met Haugen.

Horwitz says the experience of becoming a movie character is strange and surreal. He joked that the movie version of him is 'infinitely more handsome.' He also asked Sorkin to make sure there was no romantic storyline between his character and Haugen's character, since that would not be professional — and Sorkin agreed.

The debate over social media and young people's health has grown larger since the Facebook Files were published. Many lawmakers and parents are now pushing tech companies to make their platforms safer for teens. Horwitz says the big question has changed from whether social media is good or bad for kids to how companies can design it more responsibly — and he thinks that shift is a healthy sign.