The Social Reckoning Review: Sorkin’s Facebook Film Is Uncomfortably Relevant
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If you’re online and like movies, you should probably go see The Social Reckoning.
The Social Reckoning, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is a companion film to David Fincher’s famed 2011 Facebook movie, The Social Network. Don’t expect a true sequel. The two flicks are certainly in conversation with each other — there is a new signature drink that I’m convinced is a callback to Justin Timberlake’s infamous appletini scene — but The Social Reckoning isn’t a remake or reboot.
If Fincher’s film is about the rise of Mark Zuckerberg as a tech god and Facebook as a new religion, Sorkin’s is a stark look at what happens when people stop believing.
The movie follows the true story of Facebook engineer-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison, star of Anora) as she becomes disillusioned with the social media giant and the harm it wreaks. She ends up leaking thousands of internal Facebook documents to then-Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (played by Jeremy Allen White, The Bear).
Horwitz published a series of investigative reports in 2021, called the Facebook Files, that proved that Facebook actively promoted hate groups, encouraged radicalization and inflicted serious harm on teens’ mental health. An intractable Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong, Succession) is at the center of a public relations maelstrom that quickly becomes the least of Facebook’s problems.
It’s an uncomfortably relevant film. Earlier this year, Facebook, now called Meta, lost two major bellwether trials, with the juries finding the company guilty of creating intentionally addictive social media platforms and endangering children and teens. To avoid a third loss, Meta settled with 29 US states for a record $16 billion, promising to make changes to its platforms to keep kids safe.
Sorkin doesn’t provide many, if any, new dimensions to one of the biggest tech stories in modern memory. But the film encapsulates and crystallizes all the different dimensions of tension, particularly the fraught relationship between the tech industry and media institutions.
Strong’s performance as Zuckerberg is perfectly creepy and incredibly powerful. He seems to almost step into the skin of one of the world’s most recognizable and hated leaders, thanks to his astonishing level of attention to detail. Strong left me, for the first time ever, wishing I had heard more from Mark Zuckerberg.
Some of the most compelling parts of the movie are White and Madison’s performances as they repeatedly debate the merits of social media. In Sorkin’s signature snappy dialogue, Madison frequently says she believes in Facebook’s mission, that global connection and democratization are noble goals. White simply reminds her that if that were enough, there would be no story to leak.
Sorkin ekes out a happy ending, but you won’t feel better about our future as the credits roll. Meta still has a long way to go to prove its platforms are safe, and as Sorkin reminds us, the company has entirely given up on fact-checking, to our collective detriment.
The morality, or lack thereof, of a company “twice as big as the biggest country on Earth” has real consequences. The slew of tech-themed movies coming out this year is a clear reflection of our growing discomfort with Big Tech and the damage it causes. With companies like Meta plowing ahead with the development of artificial intelligence, the stakes have never been higher. And it’s already clear that Meta hasn’t learned anything from its past mistakes.
If nothing else, The Social Reckoning is an urgent reminder that Facebook, no matter its name, cannot be trusted to keep our best interests at heart.
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