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.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin explained his vision for the film during aninterviewwith 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.”
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, ananalysisof 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.”
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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.”
Kayla Harrington was a TV & Movies Writer on Dexerto’s US team, specializing in The Boys, The Walking Dead, House of the Dragon, Marvel and Star Wars. She also has bylines at Mashable, BuzzFeed, and The Mary Sue.
