Do We Like What We See When We Look in the Mirror?

One of my favorite classes as an undergraduate was a fine arts class on the history of motion pictures. One lesson has stayed with me all these years: Movies reflect how we see ourselves and our society. Television does too. Sometimes the mirror is fuzzy or warped. Sometimes what it shows us is so recognizable that it is uncomfortable.

The stories we tell, the people we make heroes and the villains we choose reveal something about the moment we are living in. That does not mean every movie is a public opinion survey. But when similar themes keep appearing, we should pay attention.

I have been thinking about that while watching Cupertino, the new series about Silicon Valley, and comparing it with HBO’s Silicon Valley. Both portray a world of money, ambition, brilliant people and questionable behavior. Yet they leave us with very different feelings about that world.

Then I saw The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s film about Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, and the reporting behind The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files. Its use of actual footage from the January 6 attack on the Capitol is powerful. Watching it, the distance between decisions made inside a technology company and consequences outside its walls feels awfully small.

Taken together, these productions raise a question that goes beyond whether Hollywood likes tech billionaires. Have we changed how we see the technology industry? And does the industry understand what we are seeing?

When We Still Wanted Them to Win

HBO’s Silicon Valley earned its credibility by getting so much of startup life right. People who had lived that life recognized the fundraising meetings, the engineering arguments, the inflated promises and the constant fear that everything could fall apart. They also recognized the absurdity of an industry that could attach “making the world a better place” to almost any business plan.

The show could be merciless. Its founders were awkward, insecure, arrogant and frequently their own worst enemies. Investors manipulated people. Corporate leaders preached grand ideals while protecting their positions. The technology was sometimes the easiest part of the business.

Still, we wanted Richard Hendricks and the Pied Piper crew to succeed. We wanted the little company with a good idea to survive the people trying to crush it or steal it. Underneath the satire, the startup dream retained its appeal. Build something useful, take a chance and perhaps you can climb the mountain.

Even the finale preserved some faith in its builders. The Pied Piper team realized its breakthrough could defeat encryption and threaten privacy. They deliberately sabotaged it, sacrificing their success because they understood what their creation could do.

That ending matters. After years of mocking these people, the show allowed them to accept responsibility. They could see the danger and choose to stop.

Cupertino gives us a different view. Its lawyers challenge the powerful people and companies of the Valley. The AI fortunes, insider relationships and mechanisms for protecting those at the top form the world they must fight their way through. The promise of joining that world has become a reason to distrust it.

In Silicon Valley, we wanted the little guys to become successful. In Cupertino, we worry about what the successful guys have become.

You can see that concern in other recent productions, including Mountainhead and The Audacity. The billionaire with a grand vision has become a familiar source of danger. His wealth gives him extraordinary reach, while the people affected by his decisions have little say in them.

That is quite a change from the founder mythology the industry spent decades cultivating.

Sorkin himself offers another comparison. The Social Network portrayed Facebook’s founding through ambition, betrayal and conflict. It was hardly a flattering portrait. But it was also a story about the creation of something that was changing the world.

The Social Reckoning returns to that world through a whistleblower and a reporter trying to expose what happened inside it. The people challenging the institution carry the story.

Sorkin’s stature makes his decision to tell this story significant. It does not prove that everyone has turned against technology. It does show that one of our most prominent screenwriters sees another important story in what that technology, and the people controlling it, have done to society.

What Happened After the Warnings?

The Facebook Files were disturbing because the reporting went beyond outsiders accusing Facebook of causing harm. The documents showed employees studying problems, identifying risks and arguing over what the company should do about them.

The warnings preceded Haugen’s public testimony. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2020 that internal research had examined how Facebook’s systems encouraged divisiveness. Its 2021 reporting documented further conflicts between engagement, growth and efforts to reduce harmful content.

Haugen’s allegation was that Facebook repeatedly put profit ahead of safety. She brought internal documents into public view and testified before Congress in October 2021. The hearings produced outrage, promises and plenty of television coverage.

The January 6 footage in The Social Reckoning gives those arguments an urgency that a congressional hearing cannot. These were real people attacking the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. People were injured. People died in connection with the attack. Our democracy was under assault.

We should be careful about assigning responsibility. Facebook did not single-handedly cause January 6. Political leaders, organizers and the people who attacked the Capitol were responsible for their actions. The congressional investigation placed Donald Trump at the center of what happened. Facebook also disputed criticisms of its response and described election safeguards it had maintained.

But asking how social platforms amplified falsehoods and helped people organize is part of understanding what happened. The film brings that question home.

Despite the hand-wringing and clutching of pearls, it is hard to say we acted on this. It is tempting to say that nothing has been done here in the United States. But that would be wrong. We have responded, albeit not enough. Two separate actions deserve mention.

First, Meta reached settlements with state attorneys general over allegations involving young users and the design of its platforms. The agreements announced in August could total approximately $18 billion over ten years. They also include changes involving teen accounts, usage limits, nighttime restrictions and parental controls.

That is a substantial settlement, with obligations beyond writing a check. The attorneys general deserve credit for pursuing it. We should also be precise: The money has not all been paid, some payments are contingent, and Meta did not admit wrongdoing. These cases concerned harms to young users. They were not a settlement over January 6.

Second, Congress passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law in May 2025. It addresses nonconsensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated sexual images, and requires covered platforms to remove qualifying material within 48 hours of a valid request. The FTC began enforcing those platform obligations in May 2026.

That law addresses a serious abuse of technology. It also demonstrates that Congress can act.

The broader legislative record is much less satisfying. Versions of children’s online safety and privacy bills have passed one chamber or another, but those votes have not yet produced a comprehensive federal law. Passing a bill in the Senate and passing a different bill in the House is not the same as putting protections into effect.

Nor should we describe every measure as a direct result of Haugen’s testimony. The settlement and the law arose through separate efforts addressing specific harms. They deserve acknowledgment, while leaving the larger question of platform accountability unresolved.

Meanwhile, Meta has moved in another direction on fact-checking. In 2025, it announced that it would end third-party fact-checking in the United States and move to Community Notes. It also said it would stop demoting content on the basis of fact-check ratings and loosen some content restrictions.

Meta described those changes as a response to excessive censorship and moderation mistakes. It still has advertising standards and content rules. Saying it stopped filtering all ads would be inaccurate.

Even with those qualifications, the direction is clear. After years of debate over misinformation and platform responsibility, Meta reduced some of the controls it had previously used.

For people who watched Haugen testify and expected a more accountable industry to emerge, that is a difficult result to accept.

Let’s be clear: This is not just Facebook/Meta; it is an industry-wide problem, beyond even social media. The present climate of the government playing footsie with the tech industrial complex, taking equity stakes, showcasing them to our friends and competitors alike, making them “to big to fail” has clearly brought an image to the public that we are seeing reflected in these movie and TV programs.

AI Arrives With This History Behind It

AI companies are entering a public debate already shaped by social media. People remember the promises about connection and access to information. They also remember privacy scandals, manipulation, addiction concerns and executives explaining why their companies could not be held responsible.

The businesses and technologies are different. But the audience has heard sweeping promises from the Valley before. When AI leaders ask for trust, they are asking people to set aside some hard-earned skepticism.

The polling suggests that this concern extends beyond Hollywood.

Pew Research Center reported in August that 52% of Americans were more concerned than excited about AI, compared with 37% in 2021. Concern among younger adults had increased sharply.

Gallup found that only 27% trusted companies to use AI responsibly. An AP-NORC survey released in October found that 64% thought AI was developing too quickly.

Those findings do not mean Americans reject every use of AI. People can appreciate what a technology does while distrusting the companies deploying it. They can want innovation and still want some control over how it affects their jobs, children and lives.

Maybe, just maybe, these productions reflect a society growing fed up with concentrated tech power and the difficulty of holding it accountable. The frustration has found expression in entertainment, public opinion and courtrooms.

The public pushback on data centers is as much about people feeling that government has failed to protect them, as much as it is about not wanting giant AI factories and all that goes with it in their backyards. Even if they are the new “engines of democracy”

I work in technology media. I see useful technology and capable people every day. There is enormous potential here, including in AI. That is why the industry should take this shift seriously. Dismissing concerned people as uninformed or afraid of progress will only deepen the distrust.

We helped put these founders on their pedestals. We celebrated their fortunes as evidence of brilliance and treated their ambitions as a guide to our future. Now we are examining the decisions that came with that power and asking who gets to challenge them.

Hollywood exaggerates. It compresses events, simplifies motives and needs a compelling villain. But the Facebook documents, the hearings and the lawsuits exist outside the movies. So do the people affected by the decisions they describe.

In Silicon Valley, flawed builders found the judgment to stop their own creation. In Cupertino, hope rests with people challenging the powerful. In The Social Reckoning, insiders and journalists bring hidden decisions into public view.

We keep waiting for someone to make accountability stick.

When we look in that mirror, do we like what we see? And if we do not, what are we prepared to change?