Were David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin right about Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

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Were David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin right about Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

12 February 2025

American actor Jesse Eisenberg played Meta/Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, David Fincher’s 2010 dramatisation about the founding of Facebook. The screenplay, written by Aaron Sorkin, was based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires.

Despite being part fiction, Zuckerberg was not impressed with his portrayal, saying Fincher and Sorkin were only accurate with his wardrobe. Think the hoodie, and those fuck you flip-flops.

For those who have not seen The Social Network, the now Meta CEO comes across as a brash, arrogant individual, who has virtually no regard for authority, and little respect for anyone other than himself. Particularly women, and the people he called friends. But Zuckerberg’s upset was understandable; few people would relish being presented in such a light.

Perhaps Fincher and Sorkin recognised that by way of one of the final lines in the film, delivered by Marylin Delpy (Rashida Jones), a lawyer acting for Zuckerberg, who said: “You’re not an asshole Mark, but you’re trying so hard to be one.” In other words, Fincher and Sorkin were trying to give a young Zuckerberg — as someone who’d become a little too obsessed with his ambitions for the the fledgling social network — the benefit of the doubt.

Some of Zuckerberg’s recent actions however may have removed any doubts. Revising Meta’s fact checking and content moderation policies, and scaling back the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruiting programs, among them. Some people may be thinking Fincher and Sorkin had nailed Zuckerberg’s character from the get go.

Even Eisenberg, whose portrayal of Zuckerberg was, I thought, pure class, seems to be of the same opinion. Speaking recently, while promoting his new film, A Real Pain, Eisenberg said he didn’t want to be thought of as being associated with the Meta CEO:

These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it? Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hate. That’s what I think… not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.

The Social Network, a film dramatisation of the founding of Facebook, by David Fincher

29 October 2010

A scene from The Social Network, a film by David Fincher.

The Social Network (trailer), directed by David Fincher, is based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, which he penned with the help of Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), one of the co-founders of social network Facebook, who later fell out with CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg).

Bookended between numerous litigation sessions in lawyers’ offices, The Social Network pieces together the early days of Facebook through a series of flashbacks. The story focuses mainly on the roles of Zuckerberg and Saverin in creating the network, and how they dealt with raising money and profile, while fending off people claiming they had stolen the Facebook idea from them.

After his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), ends their relationship, Zuckerberg, a technically brilliant but emotionally cold Harvard University computer science student, hastily builds Facemash. It’s a hot-or-not style website that compares female Harvard students with each other. Zuckerberg sources the photos Facemash needs by effortlessly hacking the databases of Harvard’s colleges.

Although Facemash is quickly shut down, word of Zuckerberg’s programming and hacking skills spread, and he’s soon approached by twins, and fellow students, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer). They have an idea for an exclusive Friendster/MySpace clone, but want to restrict membership to only those with Harvard email addresses.

They ask Zuckerberg to help, but after agreeing he instead creates the first version of Facebook, then called The Facebook. His friend and roommate, Saverin, puts up one thousand dollars to cover web hosting in return for a thirty percent share in the venture, and role of CFO.

The Facebook proves a hit with Harvard students, and other universities in the US and Britain are soon admitted to the fold. Meanwhile Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) hears about The Facebook and arranges hefty financial funding for Zuckerberg. Saverin however sees Parker as a threat to his influence, which quickly becomes a source of tension between him and Zuckerberg.

Any dramatisation about an organisation as ubiquitous as Facebook is certain to be of interest to a large number of people. Unlike many highly anticipated films that might play on the hype surrounding their subject matter though, The Social Network does not create false expectations.

Facebook made clear before the film’s release that neither they, nor Zuckerberg, had any involvement in the production of The Social Network. And while Zuckerberg does not present as a villain per se, his portrayal by Eisenberg is far from flattering.

Facebook has certainly had a controversial history (are stories of the early days of Friendster and MySpace anywhere near as colourful?) and it seems every other week brings news of another alleged privacy breach, or a new court action of some sort. Is it therefore a portent of things to come that the final scene plays out in a lawyer’s office?

Originally published Friday 29 October 2010.