Starting just before the global pandemic of 2020, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) was a highly intelligent young data engineer who was quite new to the Civic Integrity team at Facebook. She soon started noting that company analytics showed people were quickly being radicalised towards extreme political views by the types of content pushed into their feeds. It became clear that the social network she had initially looked up to was starting to seriously lose its way.
The man at the very top, Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong), held a position on free speech absolutism that looked very much like it was allowing the organisation to platform increasingly dangerous groups using the site to spread the worst kinds of misinformation. Meanwhile, Jeff Horowitz (Jeremy Allen White), a well-respected investigative journalist at The Wall Street Journal's West Coast Bureau, was looking to expose what was happening at Facebook, but needed an inside source.
After much effort, he finally made contact with Frances via LinkedIn. During an eventual clandestine meet-up, it was clear it would be difficult for her to explain exactly how the company's engagement algorithm works, but after a few more meetings, the initially reluctant Haugen became more open as her disillusionment grew.
Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong (a total acting chameleon) are all brilliant in a nicely paced film that definitely doesn't outstay its 1h 52m runtime. I could easily have handled another half hour or so of the instantly recognisable Sorkin screenplay. I'm not too sure if his attempt here as director is quite as good as his writing, though, as David Fincher's work on The Social Network (2010) is far superior. (The two films certainly make a great double bill, though.)
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