“The Social Reckoning” review: Aaron Sorkin takes on Facebook again

At first The social reporta fellow financier on a joyless meeting with the protagonist absurdly claims that chlorophyll is “an internal deodorant,” declaring this as fact because he read it on Facebook. “You drink it and your sweat smells like flowers!” he enthuses. While the scene is played for low-key, cringe comedy, it highlights two key issues at the heart of Aaron Sorkin’s gripping whistleblower thriller: one is the irresponsible spread of misinformation on the supposedly smiley social media service, while the other is the public’s willingness to buy whatever they are given.

When Jeremy Strong’s cartoonish but bitingly funny Mark Zuckerberg – whose creation of Facebook was chronicled with keen insight in David Fincher’s 2010 drama The social network – describes himself as “a free speech absolutist”. What he means is that his opposition to fact-checking is company policy. This applies whether it’s organized hate groups, politicians who criticize their opponents in negative campaigns, or mean teenage girls who bully and shame their peers.

Sorkin won an Oscar with his adapted screenplay for The social networkand if his follow-up, coming 16 years later and seeing him take on writer-director responsibilities, doesn’t live up to its critically acclaimed predecessor, well, that’s an awfully high bar to clear. But this nominal sequel makes for gripping entertainment, even if it sticks with you at the depressing conclusion to an uplifting tale addressing a scourge it’s too late to fix.

Along with his fast-paced, chatty dialogue, Sorkin’s tendency toward self-righteous indignation is very evident. But the material provides him with plenty of legitimate reasons to be upset, and the film never risks becoming a pedantic lecture.

It is also acted with galvanizing conviction. Mikey Madison plays Frances Haugen, Facebook’s introverted data engineer who believes in the company’s mission to give everyone a voice — until she sees the profit-driven ways in which that free speech gives voice to extremists. And Jeremy Allen White is Jeff Horwitz, the Wall Street Journal tech journalist with whom Haugen collaborated on an explosive series of informally titled articles Facebook filesrevealing the toxic culture behind the company’s stratospheric reach.

There’s a fascinating synchronicity between today’s real-world anxiety and the film industry’s sudden interest in in-depth studies of the dark underbelly of the technological world. A week after Sony releases The social reportBleecker Street will open MuskAlex Gibney’s breathtaking, nearly four-hour documentary about the rise and rise of Tesla titan Elon Musk. On Christmas Day, Neon will face the best of three, Luca Guadagnino Artificiala humorous and ultimately horrifying account of 20 years of AI evolution and a searing portrait of OpenAI founder Sam Altman. (There is also the documentary Elizabeth Holmes by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, You can see everything – a completely different beast.)

What all three films have in common, aside from the various intersections and overlaps in their stories, is their repositioning of tech billionaires as cinema’s new villains. Lawyers and financial traders should feel relieved. Zuckerberg, Musk, and Altman, to some extent, are all highly competent and ethically questionable con artists, all capable of selling their insatiable thirst for astronomical riches as a service to humanity, while selling themselves, not as technocrats, but as creative visionaries.

Sorkin opens with a tartly funny prologue whose title, “White Girl Wasted,” refers to a motorist (Portia Doubleday) who has stopped on the side of the road, where she stands behind the vehicle scrolling on her phone. When two police officers approach to ask if she needs help, she is curtly dismissive but turns hostile and racist as soon as they ask her – correctly – to take a sobriety test.

A double monster of entitlement and victimization, the drunken woman films the events leading to her arrest and later releases the video under the title “Voice of Reason”, including the screaming outburst: “This is what happens when you’re white in America, you get treated like a fucking immigrant!” » It was later revealed that Frances knew the woman in the viral video when she was a soft progressive, learning that she had been radicalized by a far-right group on Facebook.

Frances’ research has already uncovered a number of similar cases, including the alarming statistic that 64% of Facebook users who recently joined extremist groups were directed to these organizations’ sites by the algorithm.

Sorkin vividly paints a portrait of a company with an unfriendly work environment and little transparency. Frances’ attempt to raise her concerns during a team meeting in which Zuckerberg addresses the assembled staff is cut short when there is no time left for questions. And when she tries to talk to colleagues, one of them smiles at her outdated use of index cards while another warns her against the negative attention she receives.

At the same time, Jeff leaves a political precinct in Washington to become San Francisco’s new tech reporter, receiving a barbed welcome from bureau chief Christina (Betty Gilpin) when he is late for their first meeting because he couldn’t get the car’s GPS system to work. While fragile Christina rolls her eyes at being stuck with an analog guy to cover Big Tech, Jeff’s editor, Andy (Gbenga Akinnagbe), is a much colder ally. Jeff is assigned two social media expert interns to keep up with Facebook, where he has already noticed the improbably low number of negative user satisfaction comments.

In another thread, Strong’s Zuckerberg trembles with irritation during mock congressional hearings, with a PR team led by crisis management specialist Raya (Wunmi Mosaku), whose task is to make the Facebook CEO sympathetic. Considering he’s a heat-free zone and can’t even pick the right tie, this job is no walk in the park. Media relations manager Teddy Marks (Billy Magnussen) drops by from time to time, and Raya has also invited someone who’s sure to ruffle Mark’s feathers, her former colleague Charlie Garrigan (Bill Burr), who has just published a blunt opinion piece in a major newspaper condemning Facebook’s lax safeguards.

Hoping to detect someone on Facebook willing to talk, Jeff sends personal letters to almost every employee and, since Frances has hit a wall trying to draw anyone’s attention to what she believes to be algorithmic problems, she responds. When they meet in a secluded park, she fears breaking the terms of her contractual confidentiality agreement. But it gives Jeff some basics about content violations on which to build a story.

As Jeff continues to dig, with more information from a reluctant Frances, his findings gradually indicate that Zuckerberg and members of his management team are fully aware of the harmful side effects of their business strategy – deprioritizing likes and instead pushing for re-shares, with rage bait generating traffic in exponential numbers.

Big-sounding acronyms are used to suggest internal safeguards, such as MSI (Meaningful Social Interactions), CIT (Civic Integrity Team), or SATF (Soft Action Task Force). But faced with the prospect of engagement dropping by even one percent, Zuckerberg rules out any serious action against content infringement, infuriating Charlie by refusing to consider monitoring political ads for falsehoods. “We are a cork board,” Zuckerberg says with unwavering impassivity. “We don’t control what people pin on it.”

Without ever naming the sitting US president, Sorkin hits hard by showing footage (which appears to be largely re-enacted) of the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021. Staffers urge Zuckerberg to remove videos of the insurrection posted by POTUS, enduring an agonizing wait before finally giving the order – with removal of the posts a “tough action” of last resort.

There is nothing very subtle about The social reportalthough sometimes its blunt force can take your breath away, such as when Teddy, with cool, smug efficiency, responds to the threat of Congressional scrutiny by saying, “Congress doesn’t scare us. We’re post-government here.” With Facebook currently boasting over 3 billion monthly active users worldwide and 43% of adults now getting their news through the platform, it’s grim to know that even after the WSJ stories ran and Haugen testified before Congress, nothing changed in terms of fact-checking.

Sorkin goes Sorkin, so authoritarian superiority sometimes sets in, even if he keeps the speeches to a minimum. But he makes a compelling case for this monolithic “community forum” as a 21st-century scourge that fuels division, harms children, and weakens democracies.

The film looks great, with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth returning to ensure visual consistency with The social network and Alexandre Desplat’s elegant score that builds the tension without working too hard.

Strong’s decidedly idiosyncratic performance is likely to be divisive, perhaps leaving some wondering if he’s sometimes intentionally trying to be funny. But he gets the…