The biggest problem, to me, was suggesting that Mark basically stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins. The book traces the origins of the idea and clarifies the context. Things like: there are many other similar social networks, a boy at Mark's previous school had created and shared a "Facebook" project, the Harvard school newspaper was explicitly calling for the creation of a school wide Facebook (and that call inspired Mark to try and create one first), etc. It's less like he stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins and more like the idea was out there in many ways. What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.

I don't think the film suggests that at all. It says the Winklevoss think this, of course. But it doesn't agree with them.

> What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.

That's also exactly what the movie says. The film is on the Winklevoss's side at all - it makes them look ridiculous for thinking their "innovative" idea is that a harvard.edu address is exclusive. They're douchebags who want to make a website to put on the internet what is already happening at the Finals clubs (buses bringing in hot women to party with harvard legacies).

The part of the film that I thought was the biggest problem was that it framed the whole Facebook project as Mark's way to deal with loneliness. The film starts with him being dumped by Erica. The film ends with him refreshing (pathetically) the pending friend request to her on Facebook.

In reality he had a long term girlfriend when he started developing Facebook and she is now his wife.

Mark maybe a socially awkward human who doesn't quite understand that Facebook has become a weird perversion of actual social interaction, but he is not alone the way the film constantly repeats (Eduardo: "I was your only friend")

When I saw the film I did get the impression that it supported the "Mark stole the idea from Winklevoss twins" narrative. Granted, I saw it years ago and I may be remembering things incorrectly, but that's what I (remember that I) took away from it.

A big concept that I think the movie "gets wrong" (scare quotes because the movie successfully tells an entertaining story and isn't trying to be a faithful history, so the movie isn't exactly wrong, just not reflective of reality) is the focus on the drama with the twins, Saverin, and Mark. The book spends much more time with Facebook design decisions and a broader cast.

The movie's narrower focus on a few main characters and their drama makes it seem like the consequential moments of Facebook's history are things like getting the idea from the Winklevoss twins. The movie thinks more about a spark of an idea - Facebook, whereas the book thinks more about taking a prototype and turning it into a big business. I think the latter is more of what is important about Facebook.

It depicts that he did steal the idea from the Winklevoss brothers. It also painted a picture that he directly conspired with his investors to screw Eduardo Saverin.

I suspect that's all at least partially true, but perhaps not as clear cut as the film shows.

Movies tend to make us identify with the main character, maybe that's why I saw his actions as adequate to the throat-cutting environment.

"I read over all the stuff you sent me re: Harvard Connection and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about it after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."

Where that's happening, in the movie, well before Zuck starts working on "The Facebook". Without any other context that perhaps it wasn't Zuck's first exposure to that kind of idea.

I don't know what Saverin was actually up to in those days (reality vs the fiction of the movie), however the movie clarified that Saverin was taking the subway in New York "12 hours a day" trying to generate advertising sales for Facebook. It notes that he had taken an internship and quit the first day to direct his time in pursuit of trying to garner ad sales for Facebook. Parker insults Saverin about this in the confrontation scene at the Palo Alto house they're renting ("you're just one step away from bagging Snookies Cookies"), and then Saverin clarifies to Zuckerberg in the hallway what he's up to.

The movie makes it appear as if they decided to cut Saverin out of the company because he froze the company accounts out of spite, after Zuckerberg tells Saverin that he needs to move out to California, that he's at risk of being left behind. There's a phone call between Zuckerberg and Saverin (during which Saverin's girlfriend lights something on fire), where an upset Zuckerberg confronts Saverin about freezing the company accounts, where he rants about the risk that it posed to Facebook and its uptime.

Did Saverin actually do that, and did that play a role in why they tried to cut him out of the company? Maybe somebody else here that knows a lot more can chime in.

This story with quoted personal instant messages & emails indicates Saverin began running unauthorized ads on Facebook to promote his own thing and that there was a more elaborate decay in the relationship between the founders:

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-movie-zuckerberg-im...

If Zuckerberg looks like a shit person, it is because he is a shit person.

I think Aaron Sorkin relishes in making people look really horrible.

(I'm not talking about Damon at all here, I don't know much of anything about him. Just pointing out that lawsuits are far from the only tools available to those with means.)

Why should Zuck care if the movie paints him in a poor light? He is an near-infinitely powerful megabillionaire before the movie, and he is one afterwards. The movie could show him eating babies for an hour and a half and it likely wouldn't budge Facebook's stock price.

If I were to name this theory, I'd call it "The Law of Larry Ellison". Because no matter what you do, you'll never be as hated as Ellison and look how much that has affected him. I don't think he's sailing is megayacht to his giant private Hawaiian island and crying himself to sleep because the world doesn't like him.

Or perhaps it’s really hard to win a defamation case against works of fiction. No matter how much money and power you have.

When there's an unflattering depiction out there of you, bringing more attention to it might be counterproductive, depending on how bad it is.

If you're worried about going to prison, all of a sudden how unflattering you're seen likely becomes secondary to that.

The small penis thing doesn't seem relevant here, and even if so, it's a strategy for making it more difficult to make what would be a valid claim.

If she does, it seems like a bunch of greedy lawyers looking for a big pay day would be willing to take her libel case on contingency which would cost her nothing. If a lawyer is willing to risk a ton of their own firm's money because they're confident of a winning big multi-million dollar judgement from the filmmaker, that would a good signal that Amanda has an excellent case.

Maybe her phone is ringing off the hook with calls from such lawyers but I doubt it because such defamations lawsuits against works of fiction have been historically hard to win.

Another aspect that's made more confusing by the various replies in this thread is that the film's official marketing (trailer, official website, posters) do not mention "Amanda Knox" or even have a tagline of "inspired by a true story". Instead, it's the various news media (such as Vanity Fair magazine article she cited) making the parallels to Amanda Knox.

Yes, the filmmakers may be sly about avoiding the mention of "Amanda Knox" while being fully aware that the media outlets will make that connection in the minds of the public for them.

>The small penis thing doesn't seem relevant here,

To clarify in case the sequence of ideas got lost in the replies... I mentioned the "small penis" informal rule was a strategy for Amanda Knox to hypothetically write a fiction story about someone named "Mack Dorkin not being well-endowed" and the real Matt Damon not pursuing a lawsuit to silence her. It wasn't about "Stillwater"'s filmmakers using that strategy to protect themselves from Amanda Knox.

I had already used the adjective "informal" to describe the so-called "rule" so there was no need to nitpick that it wasn't "legal theory".

In any case, it seems like you didn't carefully read the wikipedia article so your attempted correction is not accurate. You've got your timeline mixed up.

The "small penis rule" was mentioned by journalist Dinitia Smith in 1998 (6 years before Michael Chrichton used it in his 2004 book) in a New York Times article. She was relaying a legal strategy told to her by attorney Leon Friedman.

Excerpt from the NY Times 1998 article:

>Leon Friedman, who was Sir Stephen's American lawyer in his dispute with Mr. Leavitt and who moderated the Authors Guild panel, observed that ''under New York State law, you cannot use a person's name, portrait or picture for purposes of trade without their permission.'' You can, however, use a person's identity if you don't use his name, he added.

>That is, unless you libel them. ''Still, for a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two,'' said Mr. Friedman. Thus, he continued, libel lawyers have what is known as ''the small penis rule.'' One way authors can protect themselves from libel suits is to say that a character has a small penis, Mr. Friedman said. ''Now no male is going to come forward and say, 'That character with a very small penis, 'That's me!' ''