Screenwriter Sorkin and Facebook’s Zuckerberg scrap over free spech

‘Social Network’ writer takes social media giant to task for refusing to police ads; Facebook CEO responds by throwing speech from 1995 film back at him

By ToI Staff and JTA 1 November 2019, 6:27 am

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Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019. (MANDEL NGAN / AFP)

(JTA) — The writer of “The Social Network” still has a couple things to say about Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. And they aren’t good.

Famed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin penned an open letter to the embattled Zuckerberg in The New York Times on Thursday accusing him of “assaulting truth” and taking Zuckerberg to task for his recent defense of his social network’s permissive stance on free speech. Zuckerberg told Congress recently that Facebook will not police political ads.

In the letter, Sorkin wrote that Facebook is allowing ads that spread blatant lies.

“That’s not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth,” he wrote.

“But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together,” he wrote. “Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.”

Aaron Sorkin speaks at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, California, November 16, 2017. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for AFI/via JTA)

Sorkin contrasted Facebook’s policy with what he characterized as the careful vetting of his 2010 movie about Zuckerberg.

He called on Zuckerberg “to make Facebook a reliable source of public information.”

Zuckerberg responded to Sorkin by throwing his own words back at him, quoting a passage from the screenwriter’s 1995 film “The American President,” delivered by a character played by Michael Douglas.

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship, You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say: You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”