The Social Reckoning
A gripping drama by Aaron Sorkin about a Facebook employee (Mikey Madison) who, as a whistleblower, contacted a journalist (Jeremy Allen White) to expose the social network’s practices.
In October 2021, The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles by Jeff Horwitz on Facebook’s working practices. He based his reporting on information provided by Frances Haugen, who shared thousands of internal documents and messages with him. Haugen worked at Facebook for two years and, by her own account, witnessed how the platform’s algorithms fuel polarisation, harm children and undermine democracy. She discovered that Facebook is also aware of this, but does nothing about it because the algorithms drive more traffic to the platform, thereby generating higher advertising revenue. Her revelations on this matter led not only to the articles in The Wall Street Journal but also to hearings in the US Congress.
The Social Reckoning has been written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, who also penned the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Social Network. While the latter was more of a character study of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sorkin has made The Social Reckoning primarily a thriller. Sorkin is one of Hollywood’s best-known screenwriters. He also wrote the first four seasons of the Emmy Award-winning series The West Wing. In 2017, he made his directorial debut with Molly’s Game.
Written by JC