At the time of the release of David Fincher’s 2010 masterpiece “The Social Network,” Facebook represented a massive but not entirely matured cultural phenomenon. Now, just a handful of years later, Facebook represents something much more consequential … in addition to posing a very real danger to the very same population it always claimed to benefit.
In hindsight, we all know the negative influence Facebook had on the 2016 election. We know how bad actors leveraged the social network to sow hate and spread division, further polluting America’s political atmosphere. We know it resulted in confusion and misinformation while serving as a primary factor in potentially swinging the election.
By all accounts, those tactics are ongoing, despite Mark Zuckerberg’s insipid testimony in front of Congress claiming otherwise.
Now the pendulum is beginning to swing opposite Facebook’s outsized momentum, with Congress stirring talk of it being one of a few tech monopolies that need to be dealt with and documentaries such as “The Social Dilemma” taking square aim at the negative effects of social media.
For a fuller retrospective regarding Facebook, check out The Royal Ocean Film Society’s video above. The trailer for “The Social Dilemma” is embedded below.
