The Social Reckoning – Film Review

Written and Directed by Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Anna Lambe, Bill Burr, Betty Gilpen, Billy Magnussen
Composer: Alexandre Despat
Cinematographer: Jeff Cronenweth

Duration: 112 Minutes

Some time ago, a photo popped up on my social media of a Muslim cleric with porcine features. I reported it. Facebook thanked me and assured me such photos did not violate their standards. In a nutshell, that’s what The Social Reckoning deals with.

Think the 1976 award-winning movie All the President’s Men, which exposed the corruption at the core of Richard Nixon’s second term as President of the USA. Jeremy Allen White channels his inner Dustin Hoffman to nail Jerry Horwitz, the technophobe political investigative reporter assigned by The Wall Street Journal to investigate Facebook in 2019.

What is really going on when we log onto social media? What information do they harvest and value, and are you directed to pages that may or may not be reliable? So many people now use social media to replace journalism as their main source of information, unaware of its deliberate manipulation and bias.

The film also graphically documents the impact of social media on the January 6th riots at the US Capitol.

I was reminded that when the centre left was returned to power in Sweden recently, the main coverage I saw on Facebook was that the left parties had polled as high as 98% in “immigrant areas” and election hijacking conclusions were being drawn by far right groups instantly across social media. The truth is that in Sweden, only citizens aged over 18 who are registered are entitled to vote in general elections. Believing the overwhelming ‘vote’ of migrants for the victorious parties had apparently skewed the Swedish democratic process, thousands of online posters vented their outrage. Not a shred of evidence was presented to confirm that the story was true. It didn’t matter. In politics, it says that when you are explaining, you are losing. With the immediacy of social media, and the absence of verification, all you need is to say it first to be believed. That is the real threat to democracy. It is deliberate and determined by profiteers.

The only value behind the manipulation of users is starkly portrayed by an icy Jeremy Strong (Mark Zuckerberg), whose every chilling appearance on screen seemed to frost it over. He is devoid of human emotion and is driven only by his overriding aim of making more profits, despite his obscene level of wealth.

There is no filter here, as online users are apparently entitled to free speech and are responsible for all they read. Likes, shares, and views are all rated, and these weighted values direct the user to sites they do not search for. The channelling of users to extremely radicalised anti democratic pages is amongst the many shocking statistics, revealed in Sorkin’s intelligent and well-laid-out, time-lined plot.

Enter Frances Haugen, a wonderfully underplayed anti-hero from Mikey Madison. She is a data scientist who wants to work for Facebook, but the Orwellian control of the company culture and its ingrained lack of curiosity, who do not want to analyse its impact, despite having a designated short-lived team responsible for civic engagement.

Zuckerberg, who more closely resembles a robot rather than a human, is being professionally prepared for a Congressional hearing, where he wants to be likeable. The sector is under investigation, and much is being concealed, when the ignored Haugen reluctantly engages with Horwitz and what emerges is truly shocking.

The manipulation not just of the users, but indeed of the countries where they operate, is jaw-dropping. “We are bigger than any country”, the Facebook spokesman insists. He has a point. As we journey through 2019 to 2021, the courage and underestimation of Haugen and indeed Horwitz rip off the plaster from a festering sore, that will shock and engage for the 112 minutes of well-filmed intrigue and deception that Sorkin’s writing and direction safely guide us through.

The film’s title perhaps should be tweaked from The Social Reckoning to A Social Reckoning. By 2021, the facts and documentary evidence were laid bare by the Wall Street Journal and in Congress, proving the point that social media is bad journalism and not proper journalism.

So what went wrong? Why have things gotten worse when the manipulative facts have been laid bare? The power of social media is greater than the power of undermined democracy.

The change of the guard in the USA and Zuckerberg’s podium place at the 2024 inauguration, coupled with the collapse of regulation, means that it will take quite some sea change to witness the final social reckoning of social media, and how it controls thoughts, facts, behaviour, democracies and lifestyles. The film definitely reminds us that a social reckoning is what is needed, but with us all being run by something bigger than a country…we may indeed never live to see the film’s title fulfilled and vindicated.