The Social Reckoning: a film that comes at just the right time
Outrage sparks engagement. Engagement drives reach. Reach brings in money. The Social Reckoning shows how Facebook turned exactly that into a business model – and why it affects us all.
The following film review contains no spoilers and reveals no more than what’s shown in the trailers. You can read the series of articles on which the film is based – and which earned Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz the Pulitzer Prize – here. The Social Reckoning is in cinemas from 8 October.
I still remember my first few years on Facebook very well. That was around 2008. All of a sudden, people I had long since lost touch with reappeared. Even childhood friends who had moved away at some point and whom I thought I’d never hear from again. Smiling, I sat in front of my screen and thought, without Facebook, something like this wouldn’t have been possible.
«Connecting people.» That was, more or less, the company’s big promise. A statement that, today, sounds almost naive.
Facebook’s no longer just that digital meeting place where people rekindle old friendships and post their holiday pics. Facebook – along with Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and all the other social media platforms – has become part of our social infrastructure. It’s where many of us get our information. It’s where we argue. It’s where we form opinions, find like-minded people and sometimes even create enemies.
So The Social Reckoning poses a rather uncomfortable question – what if social media platforms aren’t just standing by and watching as we drift further and further apart?
What if that’s exactly what they’re profiting from?
From human drama to critique of the system
This is what fundamentally sets Aaron Sorkin’s new film apart from The Social Network, which is sort of its prequel. Even though Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay for both films and is also directing Reckoning, doesn’t consider it a direct sequel.
David Fincher’s 2010 masterpiece told the story of Facebook’s origins, but at its core, it was never really a film about its technology. Instead, Facebook served as the vehicle for a much older story about friendship, ambition, hurt feelings, loyalty and betrayal. About people who were close to one another and eventually realised that money, power and wounded pride are powerful motivators.
That’s exactly what gives The Social Network its timeless quality – even if Facebook were to disappear tomorrow, this film would still work as a human drama.
The Social Reckoning, on the other hand, takes a different approach. It’s far more direct. More political. And certainly not timeless. Sorkin’s less interested in broken friendships than in broken systems – and in the question of how a social network that set out to connect people could become a machine that profits when people turn on each other.
At the centre of the story is an unlikely duo – Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a Facebook employee in possession of internal documents, and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who knows what to do with them. Horwitz comes from a background in political reporting and knows so little about tech that even using sat nav on the way to the editorial office is a challenge for him. But he knows how to build relationships with sources, how to establish trust – not in a manipulative way, but on a human level – and how important it is to protect them.
Haugen, on the other hand, doesn’t leak information out of hatred for Facebook, but out of love for it. At least as the film portrays her, she still believes in the mission of bringing people together. Then she sees how a friend who was once moderate becomes politically radicalised and realises that the product she’s defending didn’t just do nothing while this happened. It helped.
Perhaps even in a significant way.
And then anger became a business model…
This is where The Social Reckoning really comes into its own. After all, much of what the film tells us has actually been common knowledge for a long time. We know that social networks want our attention. Of course they do. The longer we scroll, click, comment and watch videos, the longer they can show us ads and the more data they can collect about us.
We also know that algorithms learn what we’re interested in. Once you’re stuck in a certain bubble, it’s almost impossible to get out of it. On the contrary – you’re shown more of the same topics, the same opinions, the same clickbait and your beliefs are reinforced rather than challenged. So the really interesting thing the film reveals to us is not the fact that this is happening… it’s the how.
In fact, the film bases a large part of its story on a change at Facebook known as Meaningful Social Interactions. At first glance, the idea sounds quite appealing – not every interaction should count equally anymore. A simple «Like» says less about how strongly we feel about something than a comment does. And if we take it one step further and share a post, it must be very important to us. So Facebook gives more weight to these interactions.
Makes sense, right?
The problem starts when the corporation knows – based on its own research – exactly what content reliably provokes these particularly valuable reactions. Not necessarily the content that makes us happy or brings us together. Not the content that presents nuanced arguments or encourages us to think differently about an issue. But rather the content that polarises.
Source: Sony Pictures
You know how it is. Outrage works. Anger works. Aggravation works. «The powers that be are lying to you!» works. «These people are ruining your country!» works. «Everything you’ve believed up to now is wrong!» works like a charm. It’s pure polarisation.
After all, people who are angry don’t just click «Like». They leave comments. Argue. Share. Get other people involved. And suddenly, an emotion that creates as much social friction as possible becomes particularly valuable from the perspective of a system optimised for engagement. That’s the real criticism levelled by The Social Reckoning – not that hate, misinformation and conspiracy theories exist on Facebook. Rather, that a system can profit from simply giving them a platform instead of doing anything to stop it.
Everyone has a voice – but does everyone need a microphone?
Of course, Sorkin eventually ends up addressing freedom of speech. For Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jeremy Strong, it almost becomes a matter of faith. Facebook’s a platform, he says. A neutral bulletin board. What people post there is their responsibility, not that of the company providing them with the space to do so.
Source: Sony Pictures
And yes – at first glance, the thought process behind it isn’t absurd at all. A society where companies decide which political opinions are allowed to be expressed and which aren’t isn’t exactly a good idea. But The Social Reckoning poses the more interesting counter-question: is Facebook really still a neutral bulletin board once an algorithm decides which posts appears at the top – with the goal of maximising profits?
«Everybody deserves a voice,» Horwitz says at one point in the film. But not every voice automatically deserves a microphone. True words. After all, there’s a huge gulf between «You’re allowed to say that» and «We’ll make sure millions of people see it.» Especially when reach isn’t determined by whether a claim’s actually true, but by how strongly people react to it.
The storming of the Capitol in Washington, fuelled by President Trump’s inflammatory and false claims about a stolen election – which spread like wildfire on social media – is a case in point.
The blind spot of free speech
Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg almost like a caricature. Stiff. Controlled. Emotionally difficult to read. Sometimes he seems more like what an algorithm would come up with if it were to portray a human being. And yet it works surprisingly well, because the real Zuckerberg has often seemed strangely detached during public hearings.
What’s more interesting, anyway, is that Sorkin doesn’t just make him a classic villain. At least not completely. Time and again, the question arises as to whether Zuckerberg truly believes, without compromise, in his vision of free speech, or whether this conviction has long since become a convenient moral justification for a business model that seeks one thing above all else – growth.
That’s precisely what’s most unsettling about this character – the fact that Zuckerberg isn’t necessarily lying in the film when he talks about freedom of speech. Maybe he really does believe it. But he overlooks the fact that Facebook stopped being a neutral platform a long time ago. Whoever decides what content to amplify also helps determine which voices will be heard louder than others. And anyone who makes money from it will ultimately be unable to claim they’re a mere observer.
In a nutshell
Not as good as The Social Network – but perhaps more important
The Social Reckoning isn’t as good as The Social Network. It’s less elegant, less timeless and, in terms of production, decidedly more ordinary. But while David Fincher turned the story of Facebook’s origins into a universal drama about friendship, ambition and betrayal, Aaron Sorkin shifts his focus outwards – to the system that emerged from it and to a society that had to learn to live within it.
This film covers a great deal that has long been in the public sphere. But that’s not to say it’s widely known. That’s precisely where its significance lies. We know that algorithms want our attention. We know that outrage drives reach. We know that social media has changed the way we debate. But we know alarmingly little about just how closely all these things are interconnected.
The Social Reckoning sheds light on this «how». Not always in a subtle way. It’s sometimes a little too eager to explain things, and at a pace that leaves little time to process what you’ve heard. But when the film shows how a small change to a ranking system can create an incentive that rewards anger, the abstract talk of social polarisation suddenly takes on a frighteningly tangible dynamic.
I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
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