Aaron Sorkin's Anti-Facebook Movie Accidentally Made Zuckerberg the Hero

Aaron Sorkin has spent years publicly criticizing Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, so his new film The Social Reckoning was supposed to be a straightforward takedown. The movie centers on the Facebook Papers and whistleblower Frances Haugen, with Jeremy Strong taking over the Zuckerberg role from Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network.

Then the trailer arrived, and it flipped the whole narrative. The clip shows Strong’s Zuckerberg making a free speech argument against Bill Burr’s character, essentially saying users should be trusted instead of platforms acting as truth referees. Reason writer Robby Soave, who expected to dislike the film, admitted he cheered the scene, arguing Sorkin accidentally wrote the villain as the hero because the free speech case has largely won out.

The Social Reckoning hits theaters October 9, and it lands right in the middle of the ongoing debate over social media moderation and who gets to decide what’s true online. Sorkin’s last tech-adjacent classic took shots at Zuckerberg too, but this time the audience might walk out rooting for him.

Are you planning to see The Social Reckoning when it opens?