The Social Reckoning is an important film that you should see in theaters or later online

Do people involved in using social media in a professional capacity need to be concerned about it’s downsides? If they have concerns, what if anything can they do about them?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I know that an important first step is to be informed and making sure to see a film like this is really the bare minimum of what you can do to be informed.

The social reckoning has received a lot of mixed reviews from critics while receiving a slightly better response from audiences and is not doing great financially with ticket sales.

Its actually an excellent movie and an important one.

Its just not what general audiences want to spend their time seeing in a movie theater at this point in time for many reasons.

We are in the midst of a historically fraught period with the threats of AI, mass surveillance, the Iran conflict, continued environmental collapse, unprecedented wealth inequality, a hyper polarized electorate wirh upcoming elections, and an economy teetering on the brink and this film is neither about any of those topics or an escapist fantasy to help people who want to not think about them.

(Even though its not about these specific upcoming elections it still relevant to them)

And many people are already aware of the issues with facebook and social media that this film portrays, even if not all the details that this film gives.

The film goes into a lot of detail about how Zuckerberg and the people at Facebook intentionally chose to have their algorithm push more divisive, toxic, fearful, rage bait, and false content in order to drive up engagement or peoples use of the platform.

Facebook has been instrumental in helping to spread a lot of misinformation and disinformation and in polarizing American voters and the people at Facebook knew their platform was having those effects.

I’ve seen the toxic effects of the platform myself on various friends and family members.

The film also touches briefly on the fact that Facebook knew Instagram was destroying teens mental health, but tried to hide that fact.

I saw the film myself by sailing the high seas.

While I very much wanted to see the film, I expected it to be a little bleak and depressing and that’s not the movie theater going experience I wanna have right now and I think that there are a lot of people like me who wish to see the film, but don’t necessarily want to go sit in a movie theater and watch it.

None of this is to say that the film doesn’t have any issues at all, but I think that a lot of the negative reactions from both critics and general audiences stems from the fact that this film at this point in time is more bad news on top of a pile of already bad news, and bad news that many people have already been aware for a while now, and have felt powerless to do anything about.

Compare that to the first film, the social network, which was a story about the rise of Facebook during a time when it was still somewhat new and fascinating to people; during a time before people knew how toxic it was going to become. A story that interested many people and that most didn’t already know.

You also have to consider the likelihood that Facebook or Meta is actively campaigning against the film online and especially on social media.

You just have to read up on how they viciously went after that former executive, Sarah Williams, when she wrote the tell all book “Careless People” about the serious problems with Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook’s leadership to know what they are willing to do to combat negative press.

I think the film will do very well on streaming.