A decade after telling Facebook's origin story in The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin returns to familiar terrain by sounding the alarm on some of the collateral damage caused in more recent years by a company that now counts an estimated three billion users worldwide.
In The Social Reckoning, out in theaters this week, the fictionalized Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is squarely focused on the company's growth, rather literally at all costs.
"There's supposed to be some kind of tension between growth and safety. He's abandoned the safety part, and it's just about growth," Sorkin told Morning Edition host A Martínez.
As a result, real-life whistleblower Frances Haugen has said, the social media network allowed hate speech, violence and misinformation to spread at a far greater pace than it was letting on.
Haugen's findings initially came to light in 2021 through then-Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz's investigative series, The Facebook Files. Haugen also took the unusual step of going public around the same time. In the wake of the ensuing outcry, Facebook's parent company rebranded itself as Meta.
The tech giant also said it reduced political content on Facebook feeds and gave users more control over what they see on the platform. In response to NPR's requests, Meta declined to comment on The Social Reckoning, which remains a work of biographical fiction.
Sorkin's film was inspired in part by Horwitz's book recounting the ordeal, Broken Code. Haugen (played by Mickey Madison) evolves from passionate Facebook employee to audacious whistleblower as she interacts with Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).
Horwitz found that in 2018, Facebook changed its newsfeed algorithm so that resharing or replying to a post was weighted up to 30 times as much as a standard "like," while comments were worth 15 times as much and an emoji response was worth five times as much.
"Facebook did this knowing that the thing you're most likely to re-share is anything that makes you angry — rage bait. So in addition to the enormous amount of misinformation they are pumping into the air supply, they are also purposely giving you content that they hope will make you angry," Sorkin said.
While preparing The Social Network — which earned him a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar — and The Social Reckoning, Sorkin created a dummy Facebook account to try it out himself.
After the newsfeed showed him a picture of a dachshund, Sorkin kept clicking on similar content, aware he was training the algorithm to his liking.
"For the next two years, my entire feed was filled with pictures of dachshunds, which I find harmless. So my Facebook page wasn't dangerous at all. It was pictures of cute dogs," he said.
"But if, like 43% of adults [Facebook users], you use Facebook as your source of news, you're in deep trouble."
Jesse Eisenberg's turn as Zuckerberg in The Social Network was so visceral that he was often conflated with the tech entrepreneur and fans would walk up to him in public quoting lines from the film.
Sorkin naturally reached out to him first for The Social Reckoning, which Sorkin both writes and directs. But Eisenberg refused the role.
"It turns out Jesse Eisenberg no longer wants to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't like the guy," Sorkin said. The night of the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony, he had also told Jeremy Strong of the upcoming project, and Strong had asked to be considered if Eisenberg turns down the role.
"So I got that lucky, we replaced Joe DiMaggio with Mickey Mantle," said Sorkin. "Anyone who's seen Jeremy's work at this point, whether it's in Succession or The Apprentice, here on Broadway, you know that he's going to blow the doors off the place — best American actor under 50 years old."
Strong's stiff, unemotional body language is an uncanny echo of Zuckerberg's public appearances. "But it's not about the impersonation, it's really about what's going on behind his eyes," Sorkin said.
This month, the writer-director's career breakthrough A Few Good Men is back on Broadway for its first-ever revival. The courtroom drama was first staged in 1989 before Rob Reiner turned it into a film released three years later.
But Sorkin insists his creative tank runs on empty after major projects.
"I am the living embodiment of Sisyphus. This movie, it opens October 9th. And on October 10th, I will be back at the bottom of the mountain," he said.
"I'll be banging my head against the wall and thinking, I may have written the last thing I'm going to write. I've used all the words I know in every order I can think of... So I'm girding myself for that terrible feeling."
Margaux Bauerlein produced the broadcast version of this story.
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