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Time of India
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The Social Network is getting a sequel, and it'll explore Facebook's societal impact
Aaron Sorkin is officially back in the Facebook business. The Oscar-winning screenwriter will write and direct " The Social Network Part II ," a follow-up to his 2010 hit that chronicled Mark Zuckerberg 's rise from Harvard dorm room to Silicon Valley titan. But this isn't your typical sequel. Instead of picking up where the original left off, Sorkin's new film will tackle Facebook's role in some of America's most divisive recent events, including the January 6 Capitol riot. The project draws inspiration from The Wall Street Journal's explosive "Facebook Files" investigation, which revealed how the social media giant knew about its platforms' harmful effects but buried the findings. Sorkin shifts focus from startup origins to societal fallout The sequel will explore Facebook's algorithm-driven promotion of divisive content and its impact on teenage mental health, moving far beyond the startup story that made the original such a phenomenon. "I blame Facebook for January 6," Sorkin said last year, though he coyly added that audiences would "need to buy a movie ticket" to understand why. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Beneficios del seguro de auto para mayores en 2025 Seguro de auto para mayores | Enlaces publicitarios Más información Undo Deadline reports that Sony Pictures is developing the project with Sorkin producing alongside Todd Black, Peter Rice, and Stuart Besser. It's unclear whether Jesse Eisenberg will return as Zuckerberg, though it's hard to imagine a Facebook movie without its controversial founder appearing in some form. The original film launched careers and earned $226 million worldwide, winning three Oscars including Sorkin's trophy for Best Adapted Screenplay. David Fincher won't be returning to direct this time around, but Sorkin has proven himself behind the camera with films like "Molly's Game" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7." With casting still in early stages, expect Hollywood's rising stars to fight hard for roles in what could be one of the most politically charged blockbusters in years. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation
Nina Jankowicz is the former director of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, an entity that purported to advise the Biden administration on how best to counter online misinformation but was shuttered after drawing the ire of conservatives and libertarians. Like so many other purported disinfo experts, Jankowicz's record of identifying actual lies is decidedly mixed: She had dutifully joined the intelligence community and much of the mainstream media, for instance, in wrongly asserting that the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation peddled by Russia. She personally expressed the view that the straightforward explanation—Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair shop—was a "fairy tale." Oops. But like so many other former government intelligence officials who were fundamentally wrong about pivotal issues pertaining to their area of expertise, Jankowicz is fated to fail upward. She is now the president of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting transparency, though the group does not disclose its sources of funding. That intriguing policy—some would say execrable hypocrisy—was noted by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R–Wash.) during a fiery congressional subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Jankowicz testified alongside one of her most ardent critics, the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, whose work exposing the federal government's efforts to compel social media companies to censor contrarian speech was a major driver of negative attention to projects like the Disinformation Governance Board. Taibbi's Twitter Files (as well as similar projects, like Reason's Facebook Files) demonstrated that aggressive moderation of dissident opinions online was not a choice freely made by social media companies—it was forced on them by government agents who were themselves misinformed about the facts. Jankowicz defended the Sunlight Foundation's lack of transparency on grounds that she has personally faced bullying as a result of her antidisinfo advocacy, and she wished to spare her backers from such a fate. She also tore into Taibbi, accusing him of failing to understand the implications of the information he uncovered and the social media censorship stories he had reported on. "Mr. Taibbi said when he was first searching through the so-called Twitter Files, he didn't know what he was looking at," said Jankowicz. "Well, he still doesn't. Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works." That's a bold claim from someone who bought into a conspiracy theory about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Jankowicz proceeded to flatly assert that the State Department's Global Engagement Center, charged with countering foreign propaganda, was never engaged in anything approaching censorship. This claim is abjectly false and collapses under scrutiny. At issue are two independent antidisinfo organizations, NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, that received funding from the State Department. In her testimony, Jankowicz acknowledged that these organizations were federally funded, although she defended the grants as focused on combatting Chinese government propaganda rather than encouraging censorship of American media entities. We will return to that in a moment. Jankowicz subsequently took issue with the idea that NewsGuard was biased against right-leaning news sources, noting that several "conservative" organizations including The Wall Street Journal, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Reason (i.e., this magazine) had received favorable evaluations. Neither Reason nor Cato identifies as conservative, of course; alas, this is precisely the sort of sloppiness one has by now come to expect from the antidisinfo experts. It is true, in any case, that NewsGuard favorably evaluated Reason. But the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is another matter entirely. This organization—a British nonprofit, backed by the State Department—listed Reason as one of the 10 "riskiest online news outlets" and warned advertisers against appearing on the website. The GDI's stated rationale for this purported danger was inscrutable; the disinfo cops accused Reason of having unclear authorship policies, which is simply not true. Reason was far from the only disfavored news source: The GDI targeted the New York Post, RealClearPolitics, The Daily Wire, Blaze Media, The American Conservative, and the Washington Examiner. The Examiner subsequently took a closer look at the GDI's operations and determined that its missives to advertisers to avoid "risky" libertarian and conservative news sites were partly based on the idea that these outlets were promoting COVID-19 misinformation. Specifically, the GDI was shaming these websites for including commentary that COVID-19 may have leaked from a Chinese lab. This theory, labeled a "coronavirus conspiracy" by the GDI, is now judged by the FBI, the CIA, and the Energy Department to be the most plausible explanation for the pandemic's origins. Oops, again. But wait a minute: Wasn't Jankowicz defending the State Department's decision to fund these antidisinfo organizations on grounds that they were merely using taxpayer dollars to counter Chinese government propaganda? The GDI tried to suppress the idea that COVID-19 could have emerged from a Chinese lab under lax safety conditions, a disaster that was subsequently hidden by Chinese officials. Given that millions of people died all over the world as a result of the pandemic, any organizations running cover for the Chinese government on this topic are effectively complicit in the Chinese government's most essential propaganda campaign. So much for the State Department paying disinfo cops to counter foreign misinformation. When it came to COVID-19's origins, the GDI enforced the misinformation. And Jankowicz is still defending it. The post Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation appeared first on
