‘The Social Network’ Writer Aaron Sorkin Slams Mark Zuckerberg in The New York Times
Aaron Sorkin won an Oscar for his screenplay for The Social Network, David Fincher’s film about Mark Zuckerberg and his creation of Facebook. So if anybody knows that company, its site, and that man, Sorkin does. And he is not happy with what he sees lately.
In an open letter to Zuckerberg printed in The New York Times, Sorkin slams Zuckerberg and his website for its actions — or more often inactions — to combat deceitful and even malicious political advertising. Warning that “Facebook isn’t defending free speech, it’s assaulting truth,” Sorkin wants Zuckerberg to reverse course after his site recently announced it would allow for untruthful political ads to run on its platform in the months before the 2020 Presidential election:
I admire your deep belief in free speech. I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong. But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together. Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.
Zuckerberg recently made an appearance before Congress, and struggled to defend Facebook’s new policy. In this frequently shocking exchange with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zuckerberg struggled to explain exactly how this rule on political ads would be enforced.
Will Sorkin change Zuckerberg’s mind? I doubt it! But it might at least give Sorkin some solid fodder for the Social Network sequel he’s teased writing a few times over the years. He’s already got plenty of juicy, depressing material for it. Now he just needs to get Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg on board.
Gallery — The Best Movies of the 2010s (Including The Social Network):