Review | Dead Links

What a difference a decade-and-change makes. When the roots-of-Facebook saga The Social Network came out in 2010, its subject Mark Zuckerberg was in a state of meteoric ascension, on his way to social media mega-stardom. He was a “revenge-of-the-nerdy” success story on the cusp of changing global online consciousness, and Jesse Eisenberg’s neurotic, fast-patter portrayal of the humble origin story felt oddly endearing.

It’s a different story altogether 16 years later, as laid out in the semi-horror story of writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning. (Sorkin wrote the David Fincher-directed original too.) Tellingly, Eisenberg — whose seminal Zuckerberg role launched his career — opted to disassociate himself from the role, refusing a reportedly extravagant paycheck, for fear of being typecast, because of his disinterest in the Facebook phenom at large, and, we assume, not wishing to take on a decidedly villainous role. 

TThat task is undertaken, rather chillingly, by the pale, driven and android-like Jeremy Strong in the new film. Essentially, this is the story of a hyper-powerful social media Wizard of Oz figure facing the scorn and scrutiny of the public, and also the government, for harmful practices on a mass scale. Zuckerberg/Strong’s primary scenery in the new film finds him being prepared and groomed for an upcoming Congressional hearing, facing charges of tending a monopoly, providing an open platform for political extremists (essentially feeding the insurrectional January 6 frenzy) and endorsing damaging psychological effects on its users, particularly young females.

Although we fully understand the centrality of Zuckerberg’s character, The Social Reckoning, from a broader perspective, falls neatly within the lines and formulae of specific genres — the investigative journalism genre, and tales of courageous whistleblowers. In the former role, we have Jeremy Allen White as Jeff Horwitz, a tactful but dogged reporter from the The Wall Street Journal, strategically working with Facebook employee-turning-whistleblower Frances Haugen — Mikey Madison (Anora), in a stellar performance. She has witnessed, up close and in the trenches, Facebook’s willful business plan for maintaining and expanding its user base, at the expense of the collective moral public good. 

As a bracing prelude segment which serves to haunt the rest of the film, a woman brainwashed by conspiracy theory ideology playbooks on Facebook unleashes a racist and tangled legalese tirade against Black police officers in a roadside stop. It comes to the attention of a college acquaintance, Haugen, then part of the “Civic Integrity Team” at Facebook, whose disturbing findings about the effects of social media indoctrination were ignored by the company.

The shift in Facebook’s insidious powers can partly be traced to what it called “Meaningful Social Interactions (MSI),” defined as an “algorithm metric introduced by Facebook in 2018 to prioritize posts from friends, family, and groups over public news and brand content.” This policy feeds insulated communication loops and such disastrous end results as white supremacist extremism and young women steered towards depression through body image distortions. Congressional censure hasn’t had much effect, which points up the fractious relationship of political and legal forces and corporate power players, especially in the upper reaches of the Silicon Valley world. As one tech insider in the film smugly tells Horwitz, “we’re post-government around here.”

Ultimately, The Social Reckoning pales by comparison with the earlier model, partly because of its reliance on genre cliches, which blunts the visceral reality and potential to stoke indignation. There is the added problem of history and the news cycle serving as everyday plot spoilers: we already know how this story turns out, and in fact, this story has subsequently grown new twists and dark eddies. But go, enjoy the cinematic pleasure of a well-packaged and reality-based story, about an actual product which continues to seize our attention, daily and hourly. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go on Facebook to count my likes, assuming that this review doesn’t land me in the FB pokey.