The Social Reckoning is When Jeff Met Frances, and begins in 2019, when Facebook had 2.8 billion users and was worth $1 trillion!
Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) is an investigative journalist, who has scant technological knowledge, but wants to get behind the real story about the way Facebook works, and before too long, gets the skinny from whistleblowing employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison – Once Upon a Time In Hollywood), who states she loves her job, but is also sick of the way is defrauds the basic human values of users. this comes after she’s been given short shrift in asking questions of Facebook’s Media relations executive Teddy Marks (Billy Magnussen – Road House (2024)).
Jeff gets interested in the situation around that time, when he learns that a post on Facebook had 45,000 views, and attracted 400 comments, but only 12 were negative and the remainder were positive. Given the basic nature on the latter, it became obvious that they were mostly bots, and that negative commentary were being surpressed by the algorithm. You can see that today when comments are listed under “View hidden replies”. Similarly on X/Twitter, they either come up as “Show probable spam”, or a user’s tweet shows there are comments, but they are simply not there!
In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong – so good in The Apprentice, but not as impactful here as I was hoping) is in preparations before testifying at the United States Senate, where he’s quizzed on elements such as MSI – meaningful social interactions, aka a way to boost engagement on the platform so, for exameple, commenting or sharing a post is more powerful to the algorithm than simply liking it.
Another is how he comes under fire for Facebook not fact-checking political adverts – and the radicalisation this can lead to for the hard-of-thinking. We know today, as it confirmed in the film, that he got round that problem by… no longer fact-checking anything.
He’s also miffed about the fact that engagement is dropping on Facebook. I’m not surprised. It’s become a fairly dull platform, I’m using it less and less, and when people’s birthdays come round, I realise they haven’t used the platform for years!
As for The Social Reckoning itself, though, it has a good story background of information from which to work, so why is it so snoozy in the storytelling? I wanted to like it more than I did, but a lot of it is Frances and Jeff having long, wordy conversations, and with all that droning on without trying to make it stand out, it does start to have a sleepy effect on you.
Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin also wrote 2010’s The Social Network. It was largely a decent watch, but I expect something unique from David Fincher, and it’s like he didn’t turn up and let the studio edit it, instead.
NOTE: There are no mid- nor post-credit scenes.
The Social Reckoning is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 112 minutes
Release date: October 9th 2026
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (Redcode RAW 8K)
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 6/10
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Producers: Stuart Besser, Todd Black, Peter Rice, Aaron Sorkin
Writer: Aaron Sorkin
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Cast:
Jeff Horwitz: Jeremy Allen White
Frances Haugen: Mikey Madison
Raya: Wunmi Mosaku
Christina: Betty Gilpin
Teddy Marks: Billy Magnussen
Charlie Garrigan: Bill Burr
Mark Zuckerberg: Jeremy Strong
Andy: Gbenga Akinnagbe
Tom: Nelson Franklin
Brendan: Joey Brooks
Kaylee: Portia Doubleday
Robbie: Patrick Fischler
Evelyn: Kelley Pereira
Zach: Aidan Laprete
Morgan: Anna Lambe
Blair: Roxy Sophie Sorkin
Jake: Toby Berner
Amal: Tehmina Sunny
Lucas: Conor Stinson O’Gorman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.