The Social Reckoning (2026): Why Are We So #!%$!# Polarized?

by Len Weiler

The new Aaron Sorkin film The Social Reckoning has been called a sequel to The Social Network, which came out way back in 2010. The Social Network was a commercially and critically successful picture, nominated for eight Oscars and winning three (including Best Adapted Screenplay by Sorkin). It was about young Harvard student  Mark Zuckerberg,  how he came to create Facebook and the heady early days of that first mass social network. Today, a little over twenty years later, Zuckerberg is still CEO and chairman of Facebook and of its parent company Meta Platforms (which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Thread)s.  The new movie is more about what Facebook has become than about Zuckerberg the person, although Zuckerberg remains a key figure. The film is more a companion piece than a sequel.

The Social Reckoning is based on a true story. It’s about a couple of committed  people who blew open the story of how Zuckerberg abandoned internal efforts to rein in dangerous, polarizing societal effects spawned by Facebook, choosing to focus instead exclusively on profit. What do I mean by “spawned”? Facebook encouraged increasing division and polarization in order to increase more “engagement” by its millions of users and ever greater profits. How?  By altering the formula governing how postings on the platform are disseminated so as to favor the angriest and most hateful posts. Why? Because rancor and outrage spark vastly more responses to online posts. In social network speak, more responses (i.e. more posts) mean more “engagement”. More engagement translates to more ads and higher advertising rates.  

To give you an idea of why this algorithm change is such a big deal let’s review some stats. In 2010, when The Social Network was released, Facebook had ‘only’ about 500 Million users. This was the year Instagram was introduced, so its followers were far fewer.  By 2020, when The Social Reckoning is set, the number of Facebook users had multiplied  by an astonishing 450 percent to 2.75 Billion and Instagram’s grew to nearly 1.5 Billion. (Currently, the numbers of users are about roughly 3 Billion on each platform! )

The posts with the biggest engagement numbers are the ones most likely to be pushed to users’ feeds. As we’ve learned, much (probably most) of the virulent material favored by the new algorithms contains patently false and/or misleading information, whether that‘s lies about schoolmates, soft-core porn, political smears, or other fabricated horror stories. And a huge proportion of the disinformation and hate posts originate from malign actors like foreign governments, extremist right-wing organizations and the extremist left. Most of which is high-scoring stuff according to the internal formula; so it produces ever more “engagement” and more profits.  

Notwithstanding Facebook’s purported aim to be a ‘public square’ encouraging conversations that would bring people together, Meta/Facebook’s position on hate speech and disinformation proliferating on the platform was and is that its role is simply as a bulletin board, and it has no responsibility to vet the content or police the intentions of those who post fake news and hateful, propagandistic content. In fact, they claim, it would be impossible for them to do so. 

The Social Reckoning takes place roughly from about 2019 to 2021. The character at the center of the story is  Frances Haugen, a real person. Haugen - played by Oscar winner Mikey Madison [Anora (2024), Once Upon A Time  in ... Hollywood (2019)] - is a data engineer and data product manager who, when she was hired by Facebook in 2019, had already worked in the industry for nearly thirteen years (at Google, Yelp and Pinterest). She was interested in combatting online disinformation, and Facebook made her a product manager on its “Civic Integrity Team”.  Which is where we find Haugen at the outset of The Social Reckoning. 

The other main character in the movie is  Jeff Horwitz, at the time a journalist/tech reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Horwitz (played by Jeremy Allen White [The Bear (2022-26), Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere ((2025)] was likewise concerned about the growing problem of misinformation, disinformation, lies and hate being disseminated on social media. Facebook‘s  standard response to such concerns was some variant of “we are aware of these concerns and are working to fix them.” Horwitz was trying to find insiders willing to talk to him about what was really going on inside the Facebook labyrinth. 

By that time, Haugen was growing frustrated with Facebook’s commitment to its stated ideals. Then in late 2020, her Civic Integrity Team was dissolved by the company. “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize it for its own interests, like making more money”, she later said.

Going up against one of largest, wealthiest, most powerful tech companies in the world was a dangerous undertaking.  Nevertheless, Haugen began communicating with Horwitz and eventually became a public whistleblower as well as the primary source for Horwitz’s Pulitzer Prize winning Wall Street Journal exposé, The Facebook Files, published in September 2021.  The Social Reckoning tells the fascinating, often thrilling story of how this happened and what it was like for these two courageous protagonists. 

This film reminds me of some illustrious true-story investigative forerunners, like, for example, All the President’s Men (1976), about Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation of the Nixon’s Watergate scandal; and Spotlight (2015), about the team of Boston Globe reporters  who blew open the conspiracy within the local Archdiocese to hide a pattern of child abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests (the exposé that soon reverberated throughout Catholicism as similar horrors were discovered in many other jurisdictions). Like those earlier films, The Social Reckoning is an engaging, troubling, well-told tale. Also like those films, the central characters are heroically doing their jobs, while bringing to light issues of paramount importance. And like those films, this one features fine work by its three lead performers. 

While Mikey Madison had some doubters when she won her best actress Oscar a couple years ago, that skepticism may have had less to do with her acting, which was dazzling IMHO, and mostly to do with the somewhat salacious nature of Anora (the film) and her character (called Ani, for short).  Here, she dispels such doubts in a credible, sympathetic, well-rounded performance, portraying Frances Haugen as a bright, somewhat insecure, yet courageous tech professional struggling with a career defining moral quandary. 

Jeremy Allen White also turns in a terrific performance as Horwitz, and in the process further separates himself from his most memorable role – as the brilliant, creative, emotionally tortured chef Carmy in five seasons of The Bear (2022-26). Believably playing the title role in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere last year should have made it clear that he is not limited to Carmy-like roles, but that picture was not seen by a very large audience. 

I mentioned three lead performers. The third is  Jeremy Strong who does a compelling, although not very likeable, Mark Zuckerberg. It’s actually an amazing impression: a bit nerdy, but also firm, super smart, autocratic, and proud – a man who’s accomplished a heluva lot, knows that his position and great wealth give him great power, and has zero interest in the concerns of do-gooders. While Jesse Eisenberg was wonderful as young Zuckerberg in The Social Network, it’s said that he did not look or act much like the real guy. I can’t speak to Zuckerberg’s private life character these days, but Strong nails his public persona pretty convincingly. He’s such a great actor; and if you’ve seen him in his Oscar-nominated role as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice (2024) or his Emmy and Golden Globe winning work as Kendall Roy in Succession (2018-23), I think you’d agree.      

These positive attributes are not really surprising, given writer-director Sorkin’s resume of past works, which include (in addition to The Social Network) The West Wing (1999-2006), The Newsroom (2012-2014), Steve Jobs (2015) and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).   Some critics of The Social Reckoning have suggested that the film is too preachy and didactic.  To which I can only respond: Dude! It’s an Aaron Sorkin movie! Of course it’s got a point of view.  

The question is will it make any difference?

1 hour 52 minutes    Rated R for language

Grade: A-

In theaters.