{"id":30403,"date":"2026-10-21T15:41:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T14:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30403"},"modified":"2026-10-21T15:41:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T14:41:57","slug":"a-review-of-the-important-new-film-the-social-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30403","title":{"rendered":"A review of the important new film &#8220;The Social Reckoning&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2010, we had &#8220;The Social Network&#8221;, an excellent film written by Aaron Sorkin (of &#8220;The West Wing&#8221; fame) and directed by David Fincher. That picture covered the period 2003-2009 and showed the creation and early growth of Facebook in spite of some legal disputes. &#8220;The Social Reckoning&#8221; is a kind of sequel and this time Sorkin is writer, co-producer and director. The story in this movie is focused on the period 2019-2021 and describes how the explosive growth of Facebook has been achieved through algorithms which promote engagement and division and have seriously harmed our society and many individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The original film was dominated by male characters, whereas the central role this time taken by Facebook data engineer, so-called \u201cCassandra\u201d and ultimately whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison who was so good in &#8220;Anora&#8221;. She works with &#8220;Wall Street Journal&#8221; investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to the consternation of Facebook founder and \u201cfree-speech absolutist\u201d Mark Zuckerberg (this time portrayed by Jeremy Strong (rather than Jesse Eisenberg). As cinema, &#8220;&#8230; Reckoning&#8221; does not have quite the verve and excitement of &#8220;.. Network&#8221; but, as politics, this is an even more important story which legislators, regulators and judges still have to work out as social media continues to undermine our democracy and blight so many lives.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2010, we had &#8220;The Social Network&#8221;, an excellent film written by Aaron Sorkin (of &#8220;The West Wing&#8221; fame) and directed by David Fincher. That picture covered the period 2003-2009 and showed the creation and early growth of Facebook in spite of some legal disputes. &#8220;The Social Reckoning&#8221; is a kind of sequel and this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30404,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30403\/revisions\/30404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}