'The Social Network': reviewed by Lawrence Lessig

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-zuckerberg-the-social-network

by eugenejen • 16 years ago

183 82 16 years ago

mycroftiv3• 16 years ago

That is not a "review" so much as it is Lessig expressing hero-worship of Mark Zuckerberg and attempting to minimize the numerous substantive charges of unethical behavior that have been directed at Zuckerberg. The summation paragraph begins "Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time. I want my kids to admire him." I don't have an opinion about the movie (haven't seen it), but reading this review has greatly reduced my opinion of Lawrence Lessig.

kevingadd• 16 years ago

You seem to have missed the half of the review where he talks about the importance of the internet and concepts like net neutrality. You might want to read that half too.

mycroftiv3• 16 years ago

You seem to have missed the point I was trying to make. I am well aware that Lessig has been "one of the good guys" - in fact, before reading this review, he was more or less a hero to me. I am actually shocked that Lessig seems to care as little about ethics and personal privacy as his praise of Zuckerberg indicates.

veemjeem• 16 years ago

I'm guessing you only read the first page of the article. The real meat and gist of what he was trying to convey was in the second page, where Facebook was compared to Nantucket Nectars. The movie "review" was just there to catch user attention, like authors do with the first few pages of a book.

Here's the key quotes:

"Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing. "

...

"As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea."

DanielRibeiro• 16 years ago

Another key quote for me was: No field of innovation is more burdened by the judgments of idiots in the middle than film

lzw• 16 years ago

In doing so, Lessig is reviewing the film he wishes was made about the internet, rather than reviewing this film based on the story it chose to tell. (Which is a compelling story.)

This violates the first rule of movie reviewers-- we don't care how great of a film director you imagine you'd be if you were in a position to make movies, rather than just review them.

I don't like slapstick comedies, but I'd never criticize one fro not being a scream sequel.

mycroftiv3• 16 years ago

I'm guessing you only read the first sentence of my comment. I directly quote the opening sentence of Lessig's summation paragraph from the second page.

waterlesscloud2• 16 years ago

This is not a "review" so much as it is Lessig explaining why the internet is different, and why it is important, and why it matters to you. Especially to you, reader of Hacker News.

Reading this review has further improved my opinion of Lawrence Lessig.

trickjarrett• 16 years ago

Every time I see a video of him speaking, or read something he has written, my opinion of him leaps forward. He uses a lot of big words and yet is able to clearly and simply explain that which needs to be explained. Why the Internet should not be governed by the industrial revolution's concepts.

wallflower• 16 years ago

"Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture talk at the 2002 Open Source Conference. The master of the simple slides shows us how it’s done. And since, as he says, this is his 100th time for this talk, he has this bad boy down solid. Even though this talk is from 2002, his slide presentation style is still as fresh today as Axe Body Spray."[1]

http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html

[1] http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/08/21/top-10-best-presentati...

chopsueyar5• 16 years ago

Can you please explain to me what you mean? I have read the article and do not understand why this is especially important to Hacker News.

dgreensp• 16 years ago

It's not a "review" so much as it is Lessig explaining why he is different, why he is important, and why he matters to you.

The pretentious tone (ridiculous parentheticals, using and linking "grok" for no reason) doesn't help, but all he does is criticize Sorkin for, as a "Hollywood type", missing the real story, which is how awesome and revolutionary the Internet is; plus apparently making the lawyers look too good. There should totally have been another line in the movie like, "Hey, by the way, isn't the Internet awesome and revolutionary? I'm not asking anyone's permission, in case you missed it, to put this website online. Compare _that_ to old models of distribution!"

He's talking down to both the moviemakers and the audience simultaneously, saying everyone will miss the _profundity_ of what this means about the Internet, like some bigger-egoed Sagan who criticizes space films that don't drive home how _big_ and _amazing_ the universe is, a perspective that too few seem to appreciate.

liuliu• 16 years ago

I have a problem to understand how the non-dilute share works as described in the movie. Personally, I was told that the construction is very hard since the valuation changes each round.

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

The problem with that movie is that it seems to describe Mark as both evil and a genius hacker. I think he's neither.

frisco3• 16 years ago

I've definitely heard accounts from credible hackers that Zuck is up there. I don't know him personally, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I do like Lessig's point that "Zuck's a genius, but so are many". There's a lot of insecurity around places like HN where people go, "baw, Zuck can't be a genius, because then not only would he be wealthier and more famous than me, but he'd also be more capable!" The "who's smarter?" argument is really a waste of time. It's highly likely that Zuck is an absurdly strong engineer. But, so are many others, possibly you included. Build until you hit your natural limits; before that, no one has any idea how "smart" you are, yourself included. Find your own market to win instead of taking the respect and credit away from him.

anigbrowl7• 16 years ago

I'm a great deal more impressed by his status as the battle-tested CEO of a global behemoth at age 24 even though it is fashionable to dislike him. I've met a lot of skilled and innovative programmers, but self-made billionaires are in short supply.

rokhayakebe• 16 years ago

You can say what you want, but anyone who has been to go from 0 to a net worth of 5 billion is a "fucking" genius. Good genius, bad genius, I don't know, but genius for sure.

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

When I say that he's not a genius hacker, I mean he is not a great programmer but I'm sure he's pretty smart. However, being smart doesn't equate being a great programmer and that's how the movie seems to describe him writing math formulas on a window, which is ridiculous.

jolie• 16 years ago

The movie doesn't portray him as evil at all, imo. He comes off as witty and quite good at evaluating risk.

As for his hacking abilities, I've heard stories that he's not (or is no longer) among the best; perhaps he's better at coming up with creative uses for a system than actual coding. And for what it's worth, I don't think the movie made him out to be a "genius hacker" in the coding sense -- more a genius hacker of what the Internet was intended to be.

apotheon4• 16 years ago

Lessig tells a good story, and makes important points about the power and value of an Internet free from stifling regulation. He mistakes the source of at least half the regulation, though, and casts a scurrilous, unethical bastard of an entitlement-culture entrepreneur as the hero of his tale.

Success is not the sole measure of heroism. Private enterprise is not the sole source of stifling regulation. Let's find a better hero of Internet-based entrepreneurial spirit and wildly successful efforts to get ahead of the curve (such as Paul Graham, oddly enough), and let's not minimize the efforts of government to screw over the openness of the Internet by chalking it all up to caving in to corporate interests.

Last I checked, corporate interests had little benefit to gain from granting the Executive branch of US government the power to "shut down" the Internet, for instance.

anigbrowl7• 16 years ago

As someone who has often cheered Lessig's opposition to the status quo, I am greatly puzzled by this piece.

Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other “property”? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the “idea” of a social network is not a patent. It wasn’t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law.

If we take Lessig's factual assertions about the originality of the code as face value, it still seems as if Zuckerberg ripped off a lot of ideas that were shared in confidence, and repeatedly deceived the originators of those ideas into thinking that he was working diligently on their behalf.

I can't understand Lessig's criticism of the system as stated. It is not as if these ideas were found by Zuckerberg on a Usenet forum or overheard on the bus, and the Winkelvoss twins then went after him with an army of copyright lawyers; some sort of proposal was followed by some sort of agreement, and Zuckerberg was given access to the fundamentals of a business plan and the existing work product of two other programmers. Perhaps Zuckerberg had already had a vision for Facebook and simply accelerated his schedule in order to get it to market first; but if so, one wonders why he was wasting time on taking meetings for programming jobs.

What does Lessig consider the twins should have done instead? Would he be on their side if they had drafted a proper contract, NDAs, and stamped everything they ever put on paper with the words 'Property of ConnectU, hands off'? Or is it that he doesn't consider their idea sufficiently distinctive to be protectable by the legal system? Because he never articulates quite what he means, I'm left with the impression that Lessig considers the commons to extend to any exchange of an incomplete or unrealized idea, without regard for the context in which that exchange takes place. By this interpretation, the notion of a 'gentleman's agreement' is obsolete, what you own is limited to what you can control, and any lapse in total secrecy is your loss to bear.

Indeed, I saw this view expressed repeatedly during the fuss over the iPhone prototype earlier this year. Many considered the finder of the device the new owner, regardless of his legal obligations and his knowledge of exactly who had lost it. The value the finder, and subsequently Gizmodo, sought to derive from their possession of it stemmed from the very confidentiality and general unavailability of such prototypes. But many considered possession to be fully equivalent to ownership (on a moral if not a legal level), conferring the right to exploit what one possessed to the fullest extent possible. Quite why legal technicalities of a search warrant issued shortly afterwards should have offended their sensibilities so greatly, I can't say - they certainly weren't bothered by any statutory considerations, so it must have been to do with some inexcusable lapse of style by the police.

If we are not bound to respect each other's property or confidence by anything less than our full contractual agreement, does Lessig then see progress as the outcome of an arms race between zero-sum competitors? Why should I not steal his car if he steps out of it and leaves his keys in the ignition, and place the blame upon 'the system' if Lessig summons a policeman to his aid? The value of his car stems from its current configuration as a vehicle, and Lessig is arguing that designs do not belong to anyone in particular. the materials which make up the car - some steel, rubber and various kinds of plastic - are mere commodities, and at most I have laid hands upon some junk which just happens to be organized into the shape of a vehicle at present. If I drive it away and wrap it around a tree, what has Lessig lost? With enough time and ingenuity, he could reassemble the wreckage into a working automobile: others have done no less, so why does he feel entitled to have his idea of a car actualized at someone else's expense, just because it existed independently in the recent past?

You don’t even have to possess Zuckerberg’s technical genius to develop your own idea for the Internet today. Websites across the developing world deliver high quality coding to complement the very best ideas from anywhere.

Unless, of course, they decide to launch against you as a competitor instead, in which case you had best resign yourself to basking in the reflections of their glory.

Given the midnight byline on the post, I cannot help wondering if this was written with the assistance of a post-premiere cocktail. I hardly feel he would ignore such gaping holes in any counter-argument.

danbmil99• 16 years ago

Lessig is no fan of intellectual property of any form. Apparently he's also not so much for effective contract or the value of someone's word as a bond.

barrkel• 16 years ago

That's ad hominem BS. He explicitly is against extremist copyright - and I find it difficult to disagree with him re the continuous extensions of copyright terms, and attacks on fair use - but that opposition to extremism also extends to copyright abolitionists:

"My real fear is that the last 10 years have unleashed a kind of revolutionary attitude among the generation that will take over in 10 years. And it will be hard for them to distinguish between sensible copyright legislation and the kind that we’ve got right now. So my real fear is we’re going to lose control of this animal... I just want to reform [copyright] to make it make sense."

http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/21/larry-lessig-defends-copyri...

anigbrowl7• 16 years ago

I had always thought his basic idea was to reduce the concept of copyright back to a 'limited term' of something less than a human lifespan, and to promote alternative things like Creative Commons or one or other of the open source licenses. I haven't looked at any of his more recent books, perhaps he has to stake out ever more radical positions to up the stakes?

Anyway, this seems like publicity-surfing more than anything else. I suppose if I turn on the TV tomorrow it'll be the #1 movie in America or something.

jpwagner2• 16 years ago

Why should I not steal his car if he steps out of it and leaves his keys in the ignition, and place the blame upon 'the system' if Lessig summons a policeman to his aid? The value of his car stems from its current configuration as a vehicle, and Lessig is arguing that designs do not belong to anyone in particular. the materials which make up the car - some steel, rubber and various kinds of plastic - are mere commodities, and at most I have laid hands upon some junk which just happens to be organized into the shape of a vehicle at present. If I drive it away and wrap it around a tree, what has Lessig lost? With enough time and ingenuity, he could reassemble the wreckage into a working automobile: others have done no less, so why does he feel entitled to have his idea of a car actualized at someone else's expense, just because it existed independently in the recent past?

this is awesome

jpwagner2• 16 years ago

i guess no one else liked the allegory

kjksf2• 16 years ago

You're missing Lessig's central point: $65 million is a ridiculous amount to pay for whatever Zuckerberg got out of Harvard twins and amounts to extortion and abuse of legal system.

If we go by the movie, Zuckerberg and twins met at most a couple of days, they described the general idea of the site (which, by that time, wasn't anything original: it was My Space or Friendster except with exclusivity) and he agreed to program the site. Except he didn't and instead created such a site, from scratch, by himself, dodging the twins the whole time (which implies they had no further contact except the initial meetings).

That might be an asshole move but I don't see where did twins contribute anything worth remotely $65 million. If anything at all.

If you're under assumption that if you talk to me, describe an idea for a website to me and I go ahead and implement a similar idea (with no help from you) then you deserve any part of revenue for it, they you're very much mistaken.

The reason we have NDAs, contracts and other sorts of legal tools is precisely because the above scenario doesn't play the way you think it does and if you want to protect your ideas, you can either use trade secrets (i.e. don't blab about them) or get the other party to sign a contract that spells out his rights wrt. to ideas you're planning to disclose.

It really is that simple and Winklevosses won legal lottery - there was no merit in their claims.

anigbrowl7• 16 years ago

Nobody suggests they made $65m worth of contributions. They got that amount because it was mutually agreed to reflect something like the value of what they had initiated considered as if it were equity at launch, and adjusted to reflect the capital gains they might have expected to enjoy from holding such a slice of equity. You think $65 million is a ton of money, but given that Facebook was valued at somewhere between $4 and $15 billion at the time, it's peanuts - something in the vicinity of 2%, at most. But nobody would care if it were expressed in percentage terms because it doesn't sound so unreasonable now, does it?

I do not agree that it is extortion and abuse. They made a case that Zuckerberg pulled, as you say, an 'asshole move'; and that he repeatedly misled them into thinking that he was devoting all his technical efforts to their mutual benefit, while they focused on other sorts of business development. I don't know precisely what that involved, but I rather doubt that just because they were not themselves programmers they must have spent the entire period sitting on the couch doing nothing.

Yes, if you want legal peace of mind and defensible security, then the best option is to have NDAs and watertight contracts all around. But if those are a prerequisite for any kind of trust to exist, then our legal system would bear a much greater resemblance to the code-based civil law systems which obtain in most of Europe and South America. As things stand, we give substantial weight to common law, with its emphasis on precedent and judicial independence.

You may dislike common law for its ambiguity and unpredictability - although I suspect you would chafe under the mechanical inflexibility of the alternative when you find yourself waiting a month or longer for the registration of your business to be completed so that you can legally start harvesting people's data for fun and profit. but either way, Zuckerberg started his empire in this country, and if he paid attention in his classes on American government he knew there might be some legal risks in what he was doing.

And when that turned out to be the case, he got over his egotistical reactions and eventually settled for a marginal sum, like a smart person.

chopsueyar5• 16 years ago

from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU#Mark_Zuckerberg

In November 2003, upon the referral of Victor Gao, the Winklevosses and Narendra approached Mark Zuckerberg about joining the HarvardConnection team.[9] On the evening of November 30th, they all met in the dining hall of Harvard's Kirkland House, where the Winklevosses and Narendra explained to an enthusiastic Zuckerberg the HarvardConnection website; a social network for Harvard students that was to expand to other schools around the country.[6] During the meeting, Zuckerberg allegedly entered into an oral contract with Narendra and the Winklevosses and become a partner in HarvardConnection.[1] Zuckerberg allegedly chose to be compensated in the form of sweat equity.[10][11]

Later that evening, Zuckerberg told Cameron Winklevoss in an email that he didn't expect completion of the project to be difficult. Zuckerberg writes: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."[9] The next day, on December 1st, 2003, Zuckerberg sent another email to the HarvardConnection team. "I put together one of the two registration pages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you posted as I patch stuff up and it starts to become completely functional."[6] On December 4th, 2003, Zuckerberg writes: "Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a problem set."[6] On December 10, 2003: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss. I'm also really busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be able to meet then anyway."[6] On December 17th, 2003, a week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I've basically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem set which I"m still not finished with."[6] On January 8, 2004, Zuckerberg emailed to say he was "completely swamped with work [that] week" but had "made some of the changes ... and they seem[ed] to e working great" on his computer. He said he could discuss the site starting the following Tuesday, on Jan. 13.[9] On January 11th, 2004, Zuckerberg registered the domain name thefacebook.com.[12] Three days later, on January 14th, 2004, Zuckerberg met again with Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra about HarvardConnection, however, he never mentioned registering the domain name thefacebook.com or a competing website, rather he reported progress on HarvardConnection, told them he would continue to work on it, and would email the group later in the week.[9] On February 4th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com.

The Winklevosses and Narendra attempted to force the Harvard administration to act on what they viewed as a violation of the university’s honor code. They took the case to the Harvard Administrative Board and the university president Larry Summers, but it was ruled to be outside of university jurisdiction.[13]

bokonist• 16 years ago

Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic....

It annoys me that in a piece attacking Sorkin for having a cartoon vision of the world, Lessig uses an analogy with a cartoon understanding of the world himself. The British monarch in 1790 did not have court jesters, they were long gone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester ).

martey• 16 years ago

I think this point is similar to that made in Nathan Heller's Slate article - http://www.slate.com/id/2269308/ - that Sorkin believes that Ivy League schools are still controlled by some kind of elite class (if not the WASP elite of old, some kind of new Internet-connected parvenu elite). Similarly, a member of King George the Third's court (jester or not) might assume that the United States was controlled by a landed aristocracy similar to that in England.

The fact that the 18th century British court did not have jesters is tangential at most. Call our theoretical author a macaroni (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_%28fashion%29 ) if you must.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

I've been to parties in the bike room of the porc and I've been to Henley, both are pretty much as described. If anything Harvard is actually a lot more waspish and cliquey than they make it out to be. It's not the majority of the students but it has an enormous effect on the culture.

Confusion• 16 years ago

Well, imagine there were. He's writing a piece of fiction to convey some point. It doesn't matter that it is a revisionist history.

rblion3• 16 years ago

It's fair to say that Mark is the Bill Gates of our generation. A technical prodigy with limited social skills that saw a boundless opportunity and just took the leap. Now he is rich, powerful, and hated.

He is not a murderer or a saint. Just a dude who wanted to win more than anyone else.

No idea is 100% original and are usually the sum of many great ideas that already existed.

People who didn't take the leap fully just blamed him/sued him instead of trying to build something better. I bet you most of them couldn't if they tried.

gnaritas5• 16 years ago

> It's fair to say that Mark is the Bill Gates of our generation.

Hyperbole much? Zuck is no Gates by any stretch of the imagination. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates revolutionized the world and brought computers to the masses. Zuck built a popular website, and not even an original one, these things aren't anywhere near the same league.

rblion3• 16 years ago

Who is more fitting?

What other Harvard dropout started a billion dollar technology company with monopolistic ambitions and pulled it off?

I don't even use facebook anymore, I don't personally trust Mark, but I will acknowledge his contribution. What idea is 100% original anyways...

ghshephard• 16 years ago

"popular website" - the largest social network in the world that took the platform to 500 million people?

Bill gates didn't invent operating systems, word processors, or spread sheets - but he certainly executed better than anyone before him.

I'd put Mark in the same class as Bill.

gruseom5• 16 years ago

I just got home from watching the movie, fired up HN and was pleased to see this review. But now I'm wondering if Lessig and I watched the same movie. I don't think it portrays the Zuckerberg character as evil or the others as victims.

The Winkelvii, as the movie hilariously calls them, seem indignant not so much that their idea was "stolen" as that the geek refused to know his place, which presumably was to code things up for them in exchange for token equity. They're not bad guys, but they're angry that their skewed view of the world, with them naturally at the top, turns out wrong. The movie does not make it seem like the Zuckerberg character owes these dudes shit or that they could ever in 65 million years have created Facebook. They thought of an exclusive friends website merely because they were steeped in exclusivity to begin with. Only the Zuckerberg character grasps its real power. That's the meaning of the lightbulb moment where a friend asks him about a girl and he suddenly sees "relationship status" as a way for Facebook to address this need.

The Saverin character (marvelously acted, by the way - who is that guy? - his emotional vibrancy is remarkable) is sympathetic but clueless, doggedly trying to turn Facebook into a small business that ekes out a bit of ad revenue. His dream for Facebook is that it be allowed to join the business club the way he personally craves admission into a prestigious student club. His happiest moment is when he gets an executive title; his main frustration that more mid-level ad execs don't throw him a few bones. The movie makes it clear that despite being "the business guy" he has no understanding of the business, whereas the Zuckerberg character grasps it instinctively, spends half the movie trying to explain it to him and finally gives up. On this point I think the movie gets startups right. I was rather astonished by that. The other point on which it gets startups -- and Facebook's significance as a startup -- right is in its emphasis on the founder as CEO. The contrast between Parker as the dot-com era founder who got deposed and Zuckerberg as a new generation of founder who retains control is pretty impressive historical precision on the part of filmmakers who presumably don't know much about startups.

(Incidentally, it also gets technical details right: the references to wget and Emacs in the opening scene made my jaw drop for a moment.)

As for Saverin, the movie consistently implies that he could never have remained part of Facebook, not because Zuckerberg is evil but because the abyss between the two of them is huge. Indeed, the tragic inevitability of their split is the core plot of the movie. (The Winkelvoss twins are mostly comic relief, and boy did those actors nail that.) It does, however, portray Saverin getting screwed out of his Facebook stock and Zuckerberg not doing anything about it; that was perhaps the one evil moment.

Even the Sean Parker character is only half-bad. He's a bad boy, but that's a dramatic device: the movie badly needs some shaking-up by the time Timberlake appears and his character comes with the trickster energy to do it. Beyond that, though, the Sean Parker character is the only one who gets what Zuckerberg is doing, the only one who gives consistently good advice, and the one who acts as a midwife to Facebook's birth as a real startup.

As for the Zuckerberg character, he's portrayed as an intense Asperger type who cares more about his vision than he does other people, but also more than money. The movie flirts with but eventually abandons the idea that he's motivated by petty revenge. His obsession is with making Facebook as big as it can get. I've never seen Zuckerberg as an Aspie type (and thought the actor overdid that aspect, going out of his way to hold the same furrowed expression the entire movie), but the obsession with making something great and refusal to let anything stand in its way are classic entrepreneurial qualities that the movie grants to Zuckerberg fully.

I think Lessig is wrong about the trite moral he thinks the movie is imposing on the story. The movie doesn't advance that interpretation, it vividly portrays some of the characters advancing it. That's totally different. The movie per se isn't concerned with individual characters. Everyone is granted his/her perspective but no one has any absolute status. What it's about is The Social Network, not the online one, the real one.

I went to this movie grudgingly and left surprised by how bad I didn't find it. Guess I shouldn't be, since David Fincher is my favorite working director (or would be if I could forget the execrable Benjamin Button); as Bob Mondello said on NPR the other night, I'd pay to watch him direct the phone book. Beyond that, the acting is unusually good all the way down to the cameos (except the Zuckerberg actor is too monotone). Where I really disagree with Lessig is about the writing, which he loved and which to me was ok-with-awful-bits: it's smart the way that "smartass" is smart and has way too many TV zingers. (Even those, though, were toned down from the script that was leaked. That horribly contrived line everyone was quoting a few months ago where a girl tells Zuckerberg that girls will always hate him because he's an asshole, I'm happy to report, never made it into the film. [<-- edit: oops! wrong!] Fincher has taste.)

rms• 16 years ago

>who is that guy?

He's been tapped to play Spider Man in the next Spider Man movie. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1940449/

chops• 16 years ago

He also played in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarion of Doctor Parnassus (which I just first saw last week) and was also there a very sympathetic character. I recommend it, it's odd in typical Gilliam fashion. It also has the distinction of being Heath Ledger's last film.

puredemo2• 16 years ago

That line was in the film, at the end of the opening dinner scene.

neilk• 16 years ago

Accidental downvote, sorry. Yes, this is not only in the first scene but is revisited at the very end.

gruseom5• 16 years ago

Is it really? Wow, I hate that line so much I must have selectively misheard it. Sorry!

Oh actually, now I remember: we got there a few minutes late. I didn't even realize there was an opening dinner scene. The first thing I saw was an upset-looking Z running across campus. Since the credits were still rolling I assumed the movie was beginning in medias res, and it worked fine that way. Who knows, maybe even better that way.

hdctambien• 16 years ago

"The Winkelvoss twins are mostly comic relief, and boy did those actors nail that."

The Winkelvii were both played by the same actor, Armie Hammer. Also, the "Zuckerberg actor" is Jesse Eisenberg, from Adventureland/Zombieland.

gruseom5• 16 years ago

Right, standard twin technique I guess. I was disappointed in Eisenberg for playing Zuckerberg like such a cliché. His character really doesn't do anything all movie except scowl and deliver socially inappropriate zingers, with a couple interludes of unconvincing forlornness about girl(s). Oh and build a business empire, but the movie takes that for granted.

Maybe it's the director's fault. He seems not to have found the character very interesting. But it weakens a movie to have a one-dimensional lead.

gwern• 16 years ago

> (Incidentally, it also gets technical details right: the references to wget and Emacs in the opening scene made my jaw drop for a moment.)

Emacs is actually specified in the (leaked) script. I was very impressed when I saw that.

wycats• 16 years ago

Those lines actually come directly from Zuckerberg's original blog. The voiceover as he works is exactly the text he wrote as he originally worked on hacking into the various houses' facebooks.

brandnewlow• 16 years ago

I thought the film did a great job of making Saverin very sympathetic as a character, while also making the reason for him being pushed out very understandable. You really like the guy, but the movie makes it clear that he has no idea what's really happening.

- The Florida LLC. - The Gary's Tuxedo ads - He doesn't know how to update his own relationship status. - He never really appears to do anything CFO-like other than write a few checks. The important stuff was all being done by the devs.

In the film, Saverin wanted to be somebody while Zuckerberg wanted to make something. That's why he had to be shown the door.

puredemo2• 16 years ago

This review doesn't make much sense to me. As another commenter claimed, I wonder if we even saw the same film. All the complaints that Lessig makes are clearly addressed in the movie.

For starters, it's not at issue here whether the Winkelvii deserve $65M. The film makes it abundantly clear that they do not. They are simply payed off (at a cost comparable to that of a speeding ticket per one character) for expediency, as Zuckerberg would not appear sympathetic to a jury.

The lawyers are not presented in the film as wise elders. I certainly don't recall them having any better comebacks than the younger characters. If anything, the lawyers are frequently presented as sharks; amoral, chaotic neutral characters who try to glean assets from the younger entrepreneurs at every opportunity.

Lessig goes on to conclude that the real story here is not Zukerberg's drive, that instead the film should really be about platform, the internet itself. But this is not a film about how neat the internet is, whether Lessig thinks it should be or not. It is about Zuckerberg and his dogged ambition. It's about the steps he took to develop and expand his creation into a worldwide phenomenon. Obviously the internet made that possible, but to denigrate the film because the internet itself wasn't its central thematic focus seems obtuse.

qjz• 16 years ago

Zuckerberg faced no such barrier. For less than $1,000, he could get his idea onto the Internet. He needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he invited in. Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform.

This doesn't ring true to me. It is the lack of true freedom on the Internet that makes Facebook such an enormous success. If ISPs allowed users to connect to the Internet without any restrictions, it's quite possible they would be running the equivalent of web/mail/chat servers on their home computers, and a true social network might have evolved. As it is, such innovation is restricted to a much smaller group of individuals whose entrepreneurial motivations will impose even more restrictions on users (for example, web sites are springing up that require Facebook authentication, totally eliminating the choice to opt out of Facebook).

'The Social Network': reviewed by Lawrence Lessig

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