The Social Reckoning is a companion piece to the 2010 film The Social Network. Picking up the story in 2021 to document the unveiling of the Facebook Files. Directed by Aaron Sorkin and starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy White, it is a film reflective of the talent that it contains.
Whether or not you know the details of the Facebook Files, the film is guaranteed to deliver a heavy, lingering blow, and for anyone interested in the intersections of tech, politics, and journalism, it is enthralling. Despite already knowing the cold, hard facts, I was alarmed at the revelations throughout, a testament both to the brilliance of the filmmaking and to the importance of continuing to tell these cautionary tales as we descend further into a digital ‘broligarchy’, once the preserve of dystopian fiction. It’s captured in Billy Magnussen’s line: “We’re post-government around here”.
The film takes you on a fascinating journey, from the endlessly-escalating absurd but scarily realistic nature of the opening scene, to the inner workings of rehearsal briefings, where Mark Zuckerberg, Jeremy Strong, was reminded that users are not just humans for experimentation, but in fact people. Such scenes with Strong were some of my favourites. They did a masterful job of shrinking the founder of a multibillion dollar tech empire down to size. I particularly enjoyed the detailing of his bullet proof couch for him to cower behind, it served as a wonderful foreshadowing of his woefully inadequate response to the Capitol riots. Strong as Zuckerberg was fascinatingly accurate, right down to his stuttering naivety asking if, [Trump] “Is telling them to disperse?”. I found myself both wanting to laugh and to cry that this is one of the most powerful people in the world today.
Haugen’s characterisation is where the film falters, particularly in its first half. The glove-wearing and the thread of her friend’s radicalisation add authenticity, but they can’t rescue a portrayal weighed down by incessant nerdiness, rambling monologues and frequent grasps for cultural references. What should have been a no-nonsense, intelligent and principled character instead leans lazily on the well-worn trope of the awkward nerd who can’t read social cues, hiding behind six double-sided cue cards. I was never convinced by her repeated vows that each meeting would be her last, and the handbag on a hike was a distracting touch. It does a disservice to the real Frances Haugen, whose brilliance isn’t truly captured until she takes on Congress and governments around the world in the name of disrupting Facebook’s unethical operations.
Sorkin ensures that any celebration is short-lived, leaving us with sobering evidence of the absurdity of tech regulation today: rather than implementing fact checking on political ads on Facebook, Facebook decided to no longer fact check anything. Delivered alongside the alarming statistic that over 40% of American adults get their news from Facebook, it left me dreading the next instalment of Meta’s apparent pursuit of global socio-political destruction. But at least we get to watch it play out on the big screen, as well as in our pockets.
4/5 Stars
