The Social Reckoning

The point at which the general public turned against "Big Tech" can be traced back to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.

The tide had been building for years, from reporting on Amazon's workplace abuses to Theranos's struggles and eventual implosion to Google stepping back from their famous "Don't be evil" slogan. But the explicit assistance a Facebook-contracted company lent to the campaign and eventual election of a wannabe dictator seems to have been the breaking point. As Aaron Sorkin's script tells us, as of 2019, engagement had been sliding for the past year or so. Although it makes no mention of Cambridge Analytica, if you paid any attention to the headlines back then, it's quite easy to draw the connection. It wasn't the only factor, not by a long shot, but it was a key one, and emblematic of all that was to come, industry wide.

That it's so easy to add context around the events of The Social Reckoning without looking it up points to an important contrast with The Social Network. In 2011, the public knew little about Mark Zuckerberg, and less about its inner workings. It was just a free website that quickly supplanted MySpace as the dominant online place to congregate and post your status, and whose boy genius founder took the unorthodox step of remaining CEO. But in 2026, we've been swimming in headlines and essays about their business practices and the societal harms they precipitate for well over a decade. While Sorkin carves out space for himself by focusing on how some of the most damning exposés came to light, it was always going to be a difficult task.

But what makes The Social Network so powerful still, despite coming out fifteen years ago and thus predating many of the evils Facebook would unleash on the world, is that it's about people. Mark's ex-girlfriend, who both bookends the movie and looms over every second of it, was a fictional construct that allowed the Sorkin-penned screenplay to get at deeper emotional truths about this fundamentally insecure man with a chip on his shoulder. It's rooted in people telling stories about those they knew and cared for, most notably Mark's (former) best friend Eduardo talking about the mundane (if not exactly "humble") beginnings, the intoxicating rise, and the dizzying dissolution of the early ideals as the potential of profit took over. The betrayal and bitterness are palpable, every slight and dagger-sharp word felt, because for all the smoke and mirrors and bluster, the ills of the company begin with its leadership.

There's an argument to be made that when a company gets as big and integral to daily life as Facebook, it succumbs to momentum rather than its decision-makers. The individual gets lost, with limited ability to impact...well, anything. In an attempt to capture that, Sorkin's 2026 effort (which he also directed) is positioned on the outside looking in, aiming to continue the lineage of such films as All the Presidents' Men and Spotlight. The majority of the narrative follows the efforts of Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to dig into what's going on inside Facebook. Luckily, he quickly makes contact with Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a frustrated data engineer on Facebook's civic-integrity team who's been unable to get anyone's ear regarding the alarming rate at which their platform is radicalizing people to far-right extremist groups. Despite the initial insistence that she will only provide leads, leaving him to find evidence, she slowly comes around to sharing internal documents that blow the doors off Facebook's awareness of the negative impacts of a recent algorithm change.

The bulk of these scenes are just dressed up exposition. They involve Haugen delivering information to Horwitz, having to explain the technical details due to his ignorance of tech bred of his skepticism of it, and the back-and-forth as they try to puzzle out the how and the why. I cannot imagine a world where that structure would be riveting, but Sorkin fails to clear even that much lowered bar. There's no life to the words, no character to them. In the handful of times he tries to slip in some sort of humor, it lands flat. He's never pulled us in, so there's no tension to cut, no expectation to break. Every now and then, the screenplay fumbles its way to some laughs, but it's so scattershot as to be immediately forgettable. The ultimate issue is that neither are characters so much as they are types, there to espouse the screenwriter's beliefs by lobbing softballs at each other.

That's not to throw any shade on Madison or White. Despite not being given much to work with, you never for a second doubt their integrity. Each very effectively slides into the avatar laid out for them, even managing some moments of compelling character work despite their whispy existence. White has proven to be a chameleon, impressively transforming into a wrestler and a rock legend and a Hutt, so his easy skill at playing an old school journalist with an even older soul and a voice that would fit on NPR and who's kind of a prick isn't surprising. Madison arguably has more to prove, despite her Best Actress Oscar for her electric lead performance in Best Picture winner Anora. Her track record is fairly short, especially when considering dramatic leading roles, and Ani's brash, unguarded, confrontational approach to life is the polar opposite of Frances's reserved, mousy, nerdy personality. But she absolutely hits it out of the park, from the way she's dressed to her posture to the slight contempt and condescension towards those not as smart than her. I studied Computer Science in university; Madison's Frances would have easily fit in amongst the women I knew, the product of the tension between staying true to yourself and forging your way in a field dominated by socially awkward men.

But that's only part of the story.

Like The Social Network, we're split between two moments in time. That's why there's no time for character development: we also must watch Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) prepare to testify in front of Congress about Section 230 (the law that absolves platforms from responsibility for what their users post), with the help of a crisis management specialist (Wunmi Mosaku) and an assortment of others. Narratively, it's purpose is simply to tell us more about Zuckerberg's intentions, demonstrate his inhumanity, and give Sorkin an excuse to play out an approximation of the courtroom scenes he's always been so good at. But the writing here also leaves a lot to be desired, outside of one or two killer exchanges between Zuckerberg and Charlie (Bill Burr), an aggrieved former investor and friend. Strong's impression of Zuckerberg robs him of the energy that's allowed him to craft such compelling villains while remaining contemptible, there are yet more flailing, half-hearted attempts at jokes, and the stakes of this section are woefully underdeveloped.

There are two outside events that incur on their mock deposition. One is the imminent publishing of The Facebook Files, stemming from the work of Haugen and Horwitz. Lawyers huddle in the back of the auditorium as they scramble to find out more, eventually catching Zuckerberg's attention, before he brushes it off for Teddy (Billy Magnussen) to handle. The other is a world historical event that just so happens to go down at this very moment, ending their drill. Collapsing real world events can be quite effective for landing emotional, resonant points. However, in Sorkin's hands, there seems to be little rhyme or reason for it, save for limp attempts to inject tension. It leaves the movie feeling bifurcated and unsatisfying.

A skilled director can massage the details of a mediocre screenplay to produce a decent or even good film. But as Sorkin is also the director, its flaws remain on full display. He must have sensed it, because there's a lack of confidence in the filmmaking. Every time we time jump, Sorkin is sure to inform us what year it is, despite the obvious signposts of the characters and the nearly static years (the Haugen-Horwitz collaboration stretches well into 2020). He constantly and needlessly violates "show, don't tell": when Haugen correctly predicts the rain is going to stop in five minutes, there's no need for her to say "See? I told you. The rain stopped." We know; we saw it, too. Most egregious is his anxiety that you won't find Madison's performance compelling, so he concocts a stupid and insulting device to put her in lingerie for a few scenes. Every such decision takes you out of what little story there is, making it that much more difficult to stay with it.

The core problem is its failure to convince you this particular time period is illuminating. Sure, The Facebook Papers made a splash, and put numbers to the real harm that they were (and are) responsible for. But even in 2021, none of this was revelatory. We've known for years that sharing posts evoking a strong negative reaction increases engagement. That social media breeds a warped body image and cyberbullying and increased isolation, especially amongst teenagers. That Facebook (and most platforms) only moderate the content they're legally required to, enabling misinformation and harassment and hate speech to thrive. Sure, we didn't know that Facebook's algorithm so heavily weighed shares, but that's hardly the bombshell this movie thinks it is. Putting numbers to the issue is important for clarifying the scope of the problem, and showing evidence of Facebook's willful lack of action to protect its users is important for establishing how irresponsible they are, yes. But this movie had nothing to say that wasn't already baked in to discussions of social media years before its central events took place.

The sum of all of this is, by the film's own admission, nothing. The big fight between Charlie and Zuckerberg concerned Facebook's refusal to fact-check political advertisements; a closing title card reminds us they no longer fact-check anything, something we've all known since they made the change, which Sorkin would know if he had a social media account. This film is so self-satisfied, so convinced it got him, that it literally ends with a fist pump callback to one of the clunkiest attempts possible to shoehorn basketball into the script. Meanwhile, it's five years after the The Facebook Files, and nothing has changed: Facebook's market cap has more than doubled, Zuckerberg is still CEO, and Section 230 remains.

If this film accomplishes anything, it's making it more likely that people will remember the name Frances Haugen. Given that society has failed to make the risks she took worthwhile, that will have to be enough.