With 'The Social Reckoning,' Aaron Sorkin makes Mark Zuckerberg uncool

Aaron Sorkin.

Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Aaron Sorkin was in a tough spot.

The writer and director best known for talky political dramas like "The West Wing" and "A Few Good Men" had ascended to a new level in his career in 2011: Oscar winner.

His script for David Fincher's 2010 Facebook origin story " The Social Network " had earned him an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.

The movie had become an instant classic for a generation raised on social media.

Surely he would have to write a sequel.

There was just one problem.

As the years went on, Facebook went from being a way to keep up with friends and post pictures your aunt would like to a toxic haven for hate speech.

Sorkin had taken notice and wanted to stay away.

"Over the years, every time there would be a new Facebook scandal, I'd be approached to get back in there," Sorkin told Business Insider of Hollywood's desire for a "Social Network" sequel .

"But I never felt there was a movie, until I met Frances Haugen ." Aaron Sorkin won the best adapted screenplay Oscar for "The Social Network" at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards in 2011.

Dan MacMedan/WireImage/Getty Haugen is a data scientist who was hired by Facebook in 2019 as a product manager on the civic integrity team, a division of the company that was tasked with mitigating political misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

After her team was dissolved in the wake of the 2020 election, Haugen quit — but not before copying tens of thousands of internal documents and leaking them to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz.

The documents, which showed that Facebook's algorithm was designed to spread misinformation, push users towards extremism, and was negatively impacting young peoples' mental health, became a series of stories released by the Journal called " The Facebook Files.