"The Social Reckoning"

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

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Matt Neglia (1:30)

You were listening to The Next Best Picture Podcast, and this is our review of The Social Reckoning.

Ema Sasic (1:36)

Do you have an interest in social media?

SPEAKER_2 (1:38)

Not even a little bit. Look, I'm an investigative reporter, and that guy and this company are playing an unprecedented role in our lives.

Dan Bayer (1:44)

Let's start with a gentle nod to show engagement.

SPEAKER_6 (1:48)

Yeah, not so much, a little softer.

Matt Neglia (1:51)

Yeah. This is the Journal's new Facebook detective.

SPEAKER_7 (1:57)

He's not looking for trouble.

Matt Neglia (1:58)

He's hunting for it.

SPEAKER_6 (2:00)

You can't use my name, and this is all off the record. What would you like to talk about? I ran classifiers on political groups, where 30% of content hits multiple risk factors.

SPEAKER_2 (2:07)

Hang on, I don't understand what you're saying.

SPEAKER_6 (2:08)

Aren't you a tech reporter? Ish. Ish? I just want to be clear. You love your work?

Connecting people, it's a virtuous mission because some people are awkward, and they get to be their best self when they're alone at their keyboard. So what's the problem? Something changed. I'm not sure of being an asshole because I'm white. I wanted to find out who radicalized my friend. We did.

Facebook wants you to stay on the site for as long as possible. Two years ago, the algorithm was changed. Wait.

SPEAKER_7 (2:41)

Mark, we're trying to address hate speech, and we're going to amplify and turbocharge it.

Matt Neglia (2:48)

The debate is over. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Next Best Picture Podcast, where today we are reviewing Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning. The story is as follows.

Facebook engineer Frances Haugen and the Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz blow the whistle on The Social Network's most guarded secrets. The film is starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Wummi Masako, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr, and Jeremy Strong. It is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Here to join me today for this spoiler-filled podcast review, I have the journalist herself, Emma Sasek.

Ema Sasic (3:25)

Hi, everyone.

Matt Neglia (3:27)

And Dan Bayer.

Dan Bayer (3:28)

You a fan of Facebook, Matt?

Matt Neglia (3:31)

I have a hunch that you're not a fan of Facebook.

Dan Bayer (3:34)

Not so much.

Ema Sasic (3:35)

Ish.

Matt Neglia (3:37)

Ish? No. So The Social Reckoning is a sequel, but not really to what I think is one of the greatest films I've ever seen, The Social Network, 2010's David Fincher film. Also written by Aaron Sorkin, he won an Oscar for writing this movie. He was nominated for Best Picture. Many people feel the film should have won Best Picture all these years later. This movie, though, continues the story of Facebook well beyond its origins and into what it has become for our lives today, which is a way of saying that social media has completely ruined our lives and how we interact with the rest of the world, with each other, and also how we perceive, I think, our own reality in many ways. So this movie is mostly about the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who was a data engineer for Facebook, working on the civics and I can't remember whatever the term was, but like the safety, civics and safety, I think it was team.

And so, you have this investigative journalism story, and then you also have the framing of Mark Zuckerberg, who is no longer played by Jesse Eisenberg in this movie, but is instead played by Jeremy Strong. And he is getting ready for a deposition, which he is preparing for, and you have these different timelines that are hopping around all over the place here.