In September 2021, The Wall Street Journal unveiled the Facebook Files, a series of explosive reports derived from internal documents at Facebook. These reports highlighted the company’s awareness of the harmful effects that its platforms, particularly Instagram and Facebook, have on young users. This revelation marked a significant reputational crisis for the company, which soon rebranded itself as Meta. The driving force behind this disclosure was Frances Haugen, a 42-year-old engineer from Iowa City, who left her role at Facebook with over 21,000 internal documents, prompting the US Senate to call her for testimony and instigate investigations into her findings.
Following the leak of these documents, Haugen relocated from California to Puerto Rico, where she now leads a non-profit organization advocating for transparency in social media platforms.