Aaron Sorkin is bringing the Jan. 6 Capitol Riots to the big screen with a new film. In the newest episode of podcast The Town, Sorkin opened up (slightly) about his new project, and how it might connect to his hit film The Social Network.
While discussing the state of politics in America, Sorkin made it known who he thinks is responsible for the insurrectionist attack on the White House on January 6th. “I blame Facebook for January 6,” he said, and on being pressed to explain why, he dropped some bombshell news. “You’re gonna need to buy a movie ticket,” to find out.
Sorkin then went mum on the subject, out of deference to his publicist, who was apparently in the audience at a pre-White House Correspondents Dinner party on Wednesday night hosted by WME and Puck in Washington, D.C.
He did ultimately explain why he blames Facebook, once the live audience recovered from excitement about the movie news. “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm and tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible because that is what will increase engagement,” he said. “That is what will get you to, what they call inside the hallways of Facebook, ‘the infinite scroll.’”
Sorkin went on to narrow the focus of his blame for the events that day, naming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a singular force for making the political climate worse in America.
“There is supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity,” Sorkin said. “There isn’t—it’s just growth—so if Mark Zuckerberg woke up tomorrow morning and realized that there is nothing you can buy for $120 billion that you can’t buy for $119 billion,” and then thought “So ‘How ‘bout if I make a little bit less money, I will tune up integrity and tune down growth?’” he could have a significantly more positive impact on the country.
“He can do that by honestly switching a one to a zero and a zero to a one,” Sorkin continued, adding that he’s traded words with Zuckerberg in the last 10 or 12 years “only through the op-ed pages of The New York Times.”
Upon being asked if he intends for his January 6th movie to be a sequel to The Social Network, Sorkin declined to answer, saying instead that he’s going to give his publicist “a break and not talk about it anymore”—but it certainly sounds like the answer could be a yes.
Although he associates TikTok with the “deterioration of character and standards,” Sorkin said, “I’m not blaming TikTok for January 6th or for the election of Donald Trump.”
“I’m sure that if I learned more about TikTok I would blame them,” he added.
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