The Social Network sequel is in the works — but there’s a catch

A sequel to The Social Network is currently in the works, but it won’t be a traditional follow-up as it will focus on the events of January 6.

The Social Network, the 2010 biopic following Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is getting a sequel, but not in the traditional sense, as the movie will mostly focus on the events of January 6.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin explained his vision for the film during an interview with The Town podcast, stating, “I’ll be writing about this. I blame Facebook for January 6. Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible because that is what will increase engagement.” 

On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol building was attacked by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump, also known as members of Stop the Steal, after he was defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

The mob’s goal was to occupy the Capitol building for a long time so a joint session of Congress could not count the Electoral College votes to formalize President-elect Biden’s victory. 

While more than 2,000 people entered the building, with of them vandalizing and looting various elected officials’ offices, their goal was ultimately unsuccessful, and Congress was able to certify Biden’s win.

Though Facebook as a company was never tried in court, many have pointed out how the social media platform did little to stop the spread of Stop the Steal’s organization and misinformation online.

According to CNN, an analysis of how Stop the Steal and Patriot Party groups spread on the platform showed that Facebook’s policies were not enough to stop the event’s “meteoric” growth.

“Because we were looking at each entity individually, rather than as a cohesive movement, we were only able to take down individual Groups and Pages once they exceeded a violation threshold,” the analysis stated, “We were not able to act on simple objects like posts and comments because they individually tended not to violate, even if they were surrounded by hate, violence, and misinformation.”

However, the analysis did note that, during the events on January 6, Facebook sprung into action and “deployed measures that stymied the growth of both Stop the Steal and Patriot Party groups.”

Facebook’s role on January 6 seemed to be Sorkin’s push to create a Social Network sequel, though he was interested in the idea before, telling the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2020 he wanted to explore “the dark side of Facebook” in a potential follow-up movie.

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