Social and political upheaval erupts in The Social Reckoning when Facebook employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) exposes the company practice of prioritizing clicks over user safety, and encouraging the formation of hate groups. She reaches out to Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) as a whistleblower. She provides documentation to him, and ultimately testifies before congress in 2021.
Just after the 2020 presidential election Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong), dismantles the Facebook Civic Integrity Team, which was charged with oversight of election safety, misinformation, and public discussion. Zuckerberg claims he is a “free speech absolutist” and as such his sites are just the market, just a public place like the village green or a coffee shop bulletin board. This removes accountability for ensuring the assertions (particularly around politics) made on the site are true, and Facebook can also not be held responsible for hate speech. More profitable engagement is guaranteed with the guardrails gone.
The disastrous consequences of this avaricious decision peaked during the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection as congress was certifying the presidential election win for Joe Biden. Haugen and Horwitz documented the unscrupulous practices at Facebook, which the Wall Street Journal detailed in an investigative reporting series called The Facebook Files.
The rise of social media is explored in the 2010 drama The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher. It is Zuckerberg’s (then played by Jesse Eisenberg) origin story of creating Facebook in his dorm at Harvard. The plucky nerd (and sociopath) soared to great heights, inspired by his girlfriend dumping him. 16 years later, Sorkin both wrote and directed The Social Reckoning and brother, do we miss Fincher. The film does click along smartly and will keep your attention, but there are fatal flaws. Sorkin has a self-important signature The West Wing style that simply doesn’t feel authentic here. This film might work better as a documentary, or with a different director.
“…the company is prioritizing clicks over user safety, and is encouraging hate groups…”
Women characters are treated dismissively. Horwitz makes a snarky comment to Haugen when she chides him for “mansplaining” that is incredibly tone deaf. Sorkin’s characters are flat, one-note archetypes. He makes Zuckerberg into an android. Haugen is brilliant, but cold. Horwitz is technically inept (a man who went to Columbia University can’t figure out the GPS in his rental car). The personal touches meant to make Horwitz and Haugen relatable are hokey and could be dispensed with.
This failure is not on the actors. Strong nails the dead-eyed look of Zuckerberg, but does so at the expense of the performance. He feels like furniture. Jeremy Allen White is a breath of fresh air, but even his considerable natural charm can’t save the weak dialogue. Comedian Bill Burr plays a fictional advisor to Zuckerberg named Charlie Garrigan (loosely based on investor Roger McNamee,) as the voice of reason challenging Zuckerberg. It’s a solid performance, but Burr has limited range as an actor and we just see him and not the character. Mikey Madison is miscast as Haugen. She’s a powerful actor, as she showed in Anora, and while she did what she could with the material here, the character doesn’t gel.
Historically speaking, there was no “reckoning.” Zuckerberg’s current estimated net worth is $257 billion. He’s so wealthy the numbers have lost their meaning. Moving up or down a few billion in the market is just an average Tuesday for him. This “scandal” wasn’t even a speed bump on his meteoric ascent to becoming the fifth richest person in the world.
Revisiting Jan 6, 2021 in the context of social media is depressing. It seemed bad then, but the situation has gotten so much worse. In 2026 If you expose social media shenanigans, they grin and send you more targeted marketing. Then 24 hrs later something orders of magnitude worse happens and everyone forgets. Instead of a news cycle, we have an outrage cycle that winds up burning out your ability to feel it. It’s a sad note that a turning-point of one man’s greed and profound inhumanity damaging the world feels like “the good old days” by comparison to the crisis we are in now.
"…The West Wing approach simply doesn't work here"
