How ‘The Social Reckoning’ Delivers a Bigger Burn to Mark Zuckerberg Than the Ad Campaign Implies

Before I saw Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, I intended to write about a subtle but stunning advertisement that serves Mark Zuckerberg a taste of his own medicine.

The Sony Pictures-produced spot, viewable here, is the most direct roast of a technology executive — indeed, of any corporate leader — I can recall seeing in Hollywood marketing for quite some time. Teasing the Oct. 9 release about Frances Haugen and The Facebook Files from several years ago, it delivers the line: “Mark Zuckerberg Will Love The Social Reckoning.”

Just as viewers register that and wonder if it is truly the case, the ad snaps back with: “Instagram doesn’t fact-check most ads. Why should we?” This is not an idle jab; the film itself addresses Zuckerberg’s long-standing reluctance to fact-check political advertising on Meta’s platforms. Notably, the ad is airing on… Instagram. (A Facebook variant runs on Facebook.)

However, while preparing to write about the advertisement, I attended the world premiere in New York on Sunday night. Direct as the ad is, the film goes even harder.

Sorkin’s script has Mikey Madison’s Haugen delivering lines drawn from her own Senate committee testimony, noting that the company is “buying its profits with our safety” (though the film phrases it as “health and safety”). In a highly cinematic sequence, it depicts Facebook executives watching disturbing, anger-inducing footage of January 6.

It also features a legal advisor tearing into Zuckerberg for “commoditizing gullibility,” with the founder offering up one “we’re just a bulletin board” rationalization after another — a performance designed to make theatergoers hurl unopened soft-drink bottles at the screen. The company tweaks its algorithms to prioritize reshares over likes, fully aware that ragebait constitutes the lion’s share of what gets reshared. While reporting on such matters is well-established, notably in the work of Wall Street Journal journalist Jeff Horwitz (played here by Jeremy Allen White), witnessing the process executed consciously and callously from the inside gives new fuel to skeptics of social-media platforms and may sway some of the last undecided observers as well.

Yet the film truly takes flight on the strength of Jeremy Strong, whose Zuckerberg is what would happen if The Truman Show‘s Christof fell into a vat of acid and emerged as a hybrid of The Joker and Sheldon Cooper. Straying far from the arrogant but still boyishly forgivable character portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, Strong plays the villain in full, stoically arguing that even the slightest gesture of responsibility is anathema where money is concerned while shutting down anyone who disagrees.

Not only does he avoid smiling or displaying human emotion, but Strong’s Zuckerberg appears to treat any gentle notice that his site is causing harm as a criminal interruption of the engagement work at hand. At one point, he receives advice during a hearing preparation not to use the words “users” or “humans,” as it makes him sound like he is running experiments on its customers — something Facebook, of course, actually did. I never believed it was possible to engage in character assassination through Method Acting, but Strong has proven me wrong.

Perhaps most striking is that Sony Pictures, itself a component of a technology giant, is not batting an eye, not only releasing the movie but embracing the advertisement. It was discussed internally before Sony decided that cheekily pointing at the truth was hardly inappropriate for a company that had abdicated an obligation to it. To double down, Sony dropped the teaser intentionally on the same day Meta settled its child-harm case filed by numerous attorneys general. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has reportedly even seen the ad and enjoyed it. The company certainly does not play in Meta’s sandbox, yet any large corporation willing to take on a Silicon Valley giant these days counts as a major anomaly in an oligarchical era defined by outsized market caps and cozy White House meetings.

We occupy a strange cultural moment when Hollywood studios and giant technology companies pass judgment on one another, each seeking to use its power to shape how the other is perceived. Meta, a week ago, rejected and then reversed course on an advertisement for Alex Gibney’s documentary takedown of Elon Musk; now a studio is poised to weigh in on Meta.

This is not a fair fight, since even at its most successful, Hollywood products are viewed in the millions while social-media giants measure results in the billions. (If this power imbalance was not yet clear, Meta recently marshaled resources to send a threatening legal letter to Sony, “just making the studio aware that Meta has lawyers,” as Sorkin told my colleague Caitlin Huston.)

Perhaps that explains why it feels refreshing that HBO, Bleecker Street, and, it now appears, Universal are sticking with their commitments to release the Musk documentary, while Neon has stepped in to release the OpenAI vivisection Artificial when Amazon suddenly and not-so-mysteriously lost its appetite for doing so.

Haugen gave her Senate testimony exactly five years ago today. It would be pleasing to believe that change has arrived and Zuckerberg has atoned for past sins. But while Facebook’s political advertising dial was turned down and while the famous New Mexico damages ruling on alleged child exploitation gave heart to dozens of other alleged victims, none of us are naive enough to think social media has returned to a role of connecting people or mitigating harms. Nor have its platforms lost the kind of ground one might expect from a Haugen-level whistleblower: Instagram’s user base has actually grown 25% since Haugen gave her testimony. Haugen herself says social media itself “may be worse off today than when I leaked the documents.”

Even Meta’s settlement with the attorneys general, which requires changes to features aimed at teens, contains plenty of unknowns and ties some of its actionability to competitors doing the same. Oh, and the advent of Meta’s Muse AI agent will give the company both another engagement tool to wield and an added layer of deniability.

Still, the fact that a movie is coming out that will prompt people to talk about our relationship to Facebook and Instagram feels significant in its own right. As Toby Ziegler and Josiah Bartlett could tell you, the only way to change the world is with a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens.

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