What to Know About the Facebook Whistle-Blowing Case Depicted in ‘The Social Reckoning’
Aaron Sorkin’s sort-of sequel to the 2010 “Social Network” dramatizes a whistle-blowing case at Facebook. Here’s what to know.
Aaron Sorkin’s sort-of sequel to the 2010 “Social Network” dramatizes a whistle-blowing case at Facebook. Here’s what to know.
The 2010 drama “The Social Network,” about the origins of Facebook, won three Oscars and became a cultural sensation for the way it captured the ruthless business calculations and winner-take-all mind-set of tech bro culture.
So expectations for the sort-of sequel, “The Social Reckoning,” now in theaters, have been high. The film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (writer of the earlier film), chronicles the former Facebook engineer Frances Haugen’s effort in 2021 to hold the company, which has since rebranded as Meta, accountable for downplaying what it knew about the harmful impacts its social feeds were having on users.
The Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is played by Jeremy Strong, while Mikey Madison is Haugen. Jeremy Allen White plays the Wall Street Journal reporter she enlists to expose the secrets of the Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram.
Here’s what to know about the accusations and the company’s response.
What was Facebook accused of doing?
Prioritizing growth and profit over the safety of its users. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal documented a two-tier system that exempted some celebrities and politicians from standard content moderation rules, and revealed that the company was aware that Instagram was worsening body-image struggles among girls and that Facebook had a bigger vaccine misinformation problem than it let on, among other issues.
A Facebook spokesman responded in a tweet: “As The Wall Street Journal itself makes clear, we have a team of experts who help us uncover patterns of harmful behavior so we can disrupt it. We’ve got arguably more experts and resources dedicated to this work than any other consumer technology company in the world.”
