The Social Reckoning

Rated R • Theaters

“Why haven’t you printed anything yet?” Facebook employee Frances Haugen asks Jeff Horwitz, the Wall Street Journal reporter her bosses warned her to avoid. “You told me a story,” he says, “but I need facts.”

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning continues the inspired-by-true-events narrative he began in The Social Network (2010), which he wrote the screenplay for. It’s now 2021, and Mark Zuckerberg is running a company bigger than some countries. He’s practicing for a Senate hearing—trying on ties while workshopping answers about political ads. Over the course of the day, he’s blindsided when his team finds out The Wall Street Journal is about to publish a 14-part exposé they’re calling the Facebook Files.

Rewind to 2019. Frances is a socially awkward data scientist on Facebook’s civic integrity team. She’s carrying a secret written on several 3x5 cards—64% of users who join extremist Facebook groups were sent there by the algorithm. She decides the situation is so bad she needs to tip off the press. Frances has no intention of becoming a whistleblower, but she wants the world to know something is deeply wrong at Facebook. Wrong enough to risk violating her NDA.

The film is a series of tense conversations about the inner workings of Facebook’s algorithm, so viewers hoping for a chase scene, fight sequence, or love interest might be disappointed. Jeremy Allen White is dry but funny as the tech-challenged tech reporter, and Mikey Madison’s Frances is relatable in her reluctant courage. Jesse Eisenberg declined Sorkin’s invitation to return to the role of Zuckerberg, so Jeremy Strong takes on the challenge of affecting the Facebook CEO’s robotic mannerisms.

Families should note the R-rating for language, as more than 20 F-bombs punctuate angry outbursts—many of them in a young woman’s profanity-laced encounter with police that’s replayed several times later in the film. Several characters also misuse Christ’s name. Some scenes also feature somewhat revealing clothing.

The film takes some liberties with the facts. Charlie (comedian Bill Burr), a fictional former Facebook co-founder, challenges Mark on political ads that contain misinformation. “You’re like a crossing guard standing in front of a school, but you’re not doing anything with your arms, and so the cars are just plowing down the children,” he says. Meanwhile, reporter Jeff is hopeless when it comes to his rental car’s GPS, and asks very basic questions about algorithms and data science (to the audience’s benefit, and Frances’ dismay).

Scenes with people angrily refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated because Facebook’s algorithm is feeding them misinformation seem targeted at conservatives. There’s no mention of people radicalized online by left-wing movements. The film’s climax gets even more political by cutting between a high stakes Congressional hearing and January 6th Capitol rioters beating police officers bloody and unconscious. The film suggests the two events happened close together, when they were actually nine months apart. The Facebook Files were also published later than the film implies, in September 2021.

January 6th is presented as the fruit of Facebook’s folly in allowing the algorithm to boost reshares of posts questioning election results. Zuckerberg’s defining moment in this film—which probably should have been apologizing to parents of teens harmed by Instagram—is deciding to take down one of President Trump’s posts (without naming him in the movie).

At the screening I attended in Washington, D.C., the real Frances Haugen said the film doesn’t get everything right (e.g., the real Jeff Horwitz isn’t so clueless, and the teen mental health issue was a bigger deal than the movie lets on), but it captures the dilemma she faced helping people see the devil in the details of Facebook’s coding.

All the President’s Men (1976) came out just two years after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, and received strong critical acclaim. The Social Reckoning tells a story pulled right from the headlines that continues to unfold. For some, the wounds of 2020–2021 might be too fresh to apply the liberal salt this movie offers. For others, a deeper look at the data this movie digests could lead those who didn’t delete their Facebook after The Social Network to reconsider.