Aaron Sorkin takes on Facebook again, and this time he's furious

Two statistics are outlined in Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, and they will follow you out of the cinema. The first: 64 per cent of people who joined extremist groups on Facebook were sent there by Facebook. The second: 32 per cent of teen girls said Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies.

2010's The Social Network won Aaron Sorkin an Oscar for screenwriting but David Fincher was in the director's chair. This time Sorkin does both, delivering a damning, journalistic drama about how Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) exposed what Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) and his senior team knew.

As the film tells it, the platform was addictive and harmful, yet they tweaked the algorithm to boost content designed to make users angry, because angry content gets re-shared and re-shares keep people scrolling and on the platform. Madison (who won an Oscar for her role as Ani in Anora) presents a welcome change of register as Haugen, while White is mercifully off The Bear's boil, playing a composed reporter.

From a network to a reckoning

Comparisons to The Social Network are inevitable, but this film stands on its own, even if it satisfies fewer people. It holds your attention but it's better written than it's made. The film is not a sequel in that almost nobody has returned except for cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who keeps the dark tonality of the film consistent with the earlier film; while Trent Reznor's and Atticus Ross's score has given way to Alexandre Desplat's slightly less memorable version of synths and unsettling piano.

For the most part, this is a good thing. After all, we're in an unprecedented chapter of social media.

Jeremy Strong, who opted for method acting throughout production, replaces Jesse Eisenberg and nails Zuckerberg's mannerisms and voice. We are 16 years on from Sorkin's original portrayal of Zuckerberg — young, flawed and, at moments, vulnerable, maybe even potentially redeemable. Now, he's a shell of a person, even ridiculous (apparently he has a bulletproof couch in his office, to hide behind in an attack). The film presents him as a villain, even if Sorkin says he isn't.

Yet, Sorkin's real target is us. How do you shock an audience who have already scrolled past the evidence? You open with proof. Act One, which is wryly titled White Girl Wasted, begins with an alt-right Karen meltdown: a drunk white woman recording a viral video and screaming at two police officials of colour, claiming she's being targeted for being a white woman. We soon learn she was recently a progressive and a friend of Haugen, but has now been radicalised by Facebook. Are you angry yet? It's a human example in place of a statistic that would slide off.

The film hops between 2019 and 2022, sometimes to jarring effect. Haugen, a data scientist in Facebook's now-disbanded civic integrity team and a true believer in its mission, begins to question what she sees after this video. Horwitz, a beat reporter covering Facebook, who isn't even on Facebook (a true millennial), emails every civic integrity team member, attempting to cultivate an ongoing credible source. Haugen is the only one to reply, and she starts feeding him information, then evidence, including the algorithm change, palatably named MSI (meaningful social interactions).

Facebook, IRL

The Social Reckoning is a film about Facebook, but we don't actually meet Zuckerberg until roughly 30 minutes in, during deposition preparation in a mock hearing room with his press team, led by Raya (played by Oscar-nominated Wunmi Mosaku) and his advisers, including Bill Burr's Charlie, who urges him to fact-check political ads.

Zuckerberg simply responds with "we respect our users" to make their own mind up about content presented. Sorkin's quips and rapid-fire dialogue come alive here, and anyone who misses The Newsroom series will feel at home with the back-and-forth banter as the camera bounces between speakers. In another scene, a fellow journalist tells Jeff he's joined the last two minutes of print journalism, earning a chuckle, but fewer lines land with as much conviction and satisfaction as they did in The Social Network.

To its credit, the film doesn't glamorise journalism, and there's no romance between its leads, a trope we're usually handed. The only remotely sexy moment is when Haugen turns up at Horwitz's hotel room dressed, supposedly in disguise, as if she's on a date; it feels like a thinly veiled excuse to see Madison in tight clothing. In a film about platforms engineered to hold our gaze, it's an odd moment to catch Sorkin engineering one.

During my viewing of the film, I was wondering if it might have been more effective with more real-life consequences on screen. Then it reached the events of January 6, 2021, which is, arguably, enough. In the war room, as the frightening riot rages on at the Capitol in Washington, DC, they're asking Zuckerberg to block the sitting president on the platform (Trump is never named) from inciting more violence. We watch in disbelief as he hesitates.

Another potent moment comes when Haugen has a scare, thinking she's been outed as the source, and for a split second questions whether what Facebook is doing with the algorithm is even really a big deal and who is she to be a whistleblower? Horwitz says he isn't angry about apps like Facebook seeping into mainstream news, or even threatening his own future as an investigative journalist; he's angry because they're doing his job so badly and, yes, it is a big deal. This Wild West lack of regulation and the feeding of misinformation are actions he can't abide, and we shouldn't either.

Where do we go from here?

Sorkin has said in recent interviews he wants the film to be evergreen, and his reverence for American institutions and the media still stands. That's hardly new for him, but the cynic in me leans towards distrust.

But as our protagonists take risks, believing in journalism's ability to "cause pain" for the right reasons (as Horwitz puts it) and hold people accountable, it gives hope that there may still be goodness in media reporting.

Interestingly, Sorkin withholds a real-life postscript. Since the events of the film, Meta (the name change came three weeks after the release of the Journal's "Facebook Files"), has agreed to make major changes to Facebook and Instagram, and to pay up to $US18 billion to settle claims from dozens of US states over teen addiction. Perhaps even Sorkin knows there's more work to be done.

The Social Reckoning is for the cynics and the numbed. See it, then put your phone away on the walk home.