Topline
Claire Foy has been tapped to play Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in a new series about the company’s quest for growth and its influence on politics and users’ mental health, Variety reports, days after a whistleblower testified to Congress that the social media giant puts “profits before people.”
Claire Foy arrives for the British Vogue Tiffany Fashion and Film Event in central London, Monday, … [+]
Key Facts
Foy, best known for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, will portray Sandberg in Doomsday Machine, based on the book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, which was released this summer.
Frenkel and Kang, New York Times reporters, and Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker writer whose reporting is also used in the series, are serving as executive producers as well as consultants.
Doomsday has yet to announce who will be playing Facebook’s embattled CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a distribution partner for the series or a release date.
Set in 2016, Doomsday will follow the rise of political disinformation on the site, the XCHECK program that allowed leaders like former President Trump to skirt around its policies, and the recent revelation that Facebook was aware its services put young users at risk for mental health issues and did nothing.
Key Background
On Tuesday whistleblower Frances Haugen pushed Congress to act weeks after she began leaking alarming information about the company. Last week the Wall Street Journal released “The Facebook Files,” an investigative series based on leaked information Haugen. Internal research released from the former Facebook employee showed the site knowingly ignored the dangerous spread of misinformation and that its algorithm boosted engagement while stoking hostility. The leaks also revealed that internal company research showed that Instagram, a Facebook product, negatively affects the mental health of teen girls who use it, and the company resisted changing the platform.
Further Reading
Facebook ‘Puts Astronomical Profits Over People,’ Whistle-Blower Tells Congress (Forbes)
Senators Tear Into Facebook Over Instagram’s Mental Health Impacts (Forbes)
Facebook Lost About $65 Million During Hours-Long Outage (Forbes)
The Facebook Files (Wall Street Journal)
