Since leaving the White House, McLaughlin served as executive director at Civic Commons — a nonprofit dedicated to apps for local government — and taught a class at Stanford Law School.

McLaughlin was a key voice in Google’s internal debates about its operations in China five years ago, which is a huge issue for social media companies.

You can find McLaughlin’s Tumblr, where he posts a few photos a month, here.

New York-based Tumblr runs 36.5 million blogs and has a staff of about 60.

The Facebook movie is finally here, the reviews are in and–no surprise–the critics are raving.

After all, it was done by Hollywood pros director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, who have apparently transformed the appalling badly penned and very fictional book “Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” by Ben Mezrich into some bit of cinematic art.

But that’s not BoomTown talking, so here is a rundown of five reviews by top critics, as collected by the terrific Rotten Tomaties site (you can click on the links below for the full reviews):

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:

“Smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, directed to within an inch of its life by David Fincher and anchored by a perfectly pitched performance by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘The Social Network’ is a barn-burner of a tale that unfolds at a splendid clip.”

Owen Glelbermann, Entertainment Weekly:

“‘The Social Network’ has everything you want in a thriller for the brain: Huge doses of ego and duplicity, corporate backstabbing, and some very layered performances.”

Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal:

“This account of Facebook’s founder, and of the website’s explosive growth, quickly lifts you to a state of exhilaration, and pretty much keeps you there for two hours.”

Bob Mondello, NPR:

“‘The Social Network’ is terrific entertainment–an unlikely thriller that makes business ethics, class distinctions and intellectual-property arguments sexy.”

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News:

“Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you.”

Hauntingly sexy is simply not the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that I know or what most think of the powerful social networking site, but it seems to go on and on like that in the reviews, with every critic using the film to wax poetic about life in the digital age.

(Personally, I find all my life lessons in “The Terminator” series, but no one seems to grok my profound insight here.)

On Rotten Tomatoes, which you can see above, the movie got a 97 percent critics rating, although only an 81 percent audience vote. Still, only Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is as close.

In other words, Mark, even if it is trashing you as a person, what you represent seems to have inspired analog ecstasy and movie magic.

And for most film critics, it seems, a very happy ending.

I will be seeing “The Social Network” later today at a special screening in Silicon Valley, sponsored by Eastwick Communications, which will be followed by a panel discussion titled: “Trust, Privacy, and Ethics in the Facebook Age.”

I am the moderator, and the interviewees include M. Ryan Calo, director of the Consumer Privacy Project at Stanford Law School; Matt Cohler, one of Facebook’s earliest execs (where he remains a special advisor) and now a VC at Benchmark Capital; FutureWorks’ Brian Solis; and ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik.

Video TK, natch, although I am going more for wobbly, rather than exhilarating.

I certainly could not do much better than another genius version by Next Media Animation from Taiwan. While only in CGI, there is bathroom sex, beatings, peepholes and–say what?–a gay love triangle.

Really and truly–enjoy:

The world of Facebook did not stop last Friday–although its unusual downtime was kind of spooky–when “The Social Network” made its debut in New York.

The much-anticipated movie opens wide this Friday for all to see what the hubbub is about.

And for everyone in Silicon Valley to debate, of course, grokking the film that looks askance at the origins of the powerful social networking site and especially its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

BoomTown will be doing so on Friday after a 2 pm screening sponsored by Eastwick Communications, which will be followed by a panel discussion titled: “Trust, Privacy, and Ethics in the Facebook Age.”

Panelists include M. Ryan Calo, director of the Consumer Privacy Project at Stanford Law School; Matt Cohler, one of Facebook’s earliest execs (where he remains a special advisor) and now a VC at Benchmark Capital; FutureWorks’ Brian Solis; and ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik.

It sounds very lofty, but I plan to be hopped up on Red Vines and Jujubes–so please send some suggestions for questions to ask the panel to @karaswisher on Twitter.

Until then, I leave you with this terrific picture below of Zuckerberg and Newark Mayor Cory Booker at a KIPP school there that was posted by Solis.

Frankly, I don’t give a fig about whether the timing of his $100 million donation to help reform education was or was not to burnish his image, after seeing the promise on the faces of these kids.

It is hopefully one of many more to come from the vast wealth Zuckerberg will have after Facebook goes public.

In fact, I’d like to know what the Winklevii did with their $65 million payout, other than flap their lantern jaws about how they needed more dough for creating exactly nothing.

Zuckerberg might deserve a lot of smacking around for serious issues related to how he runs Facebook now and in the future–and he surely is about to get a truckload related to the founding of the company.

But for the donation alone, let’s all try to drop our deep cynicism for just one moment–even as we all enjoy a movie at his expense too.

Ryan Calo, senior research fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University Law School, has been trying to answer that question. This summer, he released a draft of a paper titled the Boundaries of Privacy Harm that is set to be published in the Indiana Law Journal next year.

Calo spoke with Digits about privacy harm and how it applies in the digital world. His condensed comments are below.

Why do we need to define privacy harm?

If you look at regulations of abortion or sodomy or contraception, the Supreme Court looked at these as privacy issues. But a lot of people would say you can’t regulate sex between two people of the same gender, not because it happens in private but because it’s an equality issue. … In order to surface these values, we need to draw a line and say that not everything is privacy.

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While you are all doing that (well, some of you), I’m at Stanford Law School for the kick-off dinner for the 15th annual Stanford Directors’ College. Tonight’s keynote speaker: Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz. Check back to this post for live updates.

Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer sends his regards. So does Law Professor Joseph Grundfest, a former SEC commissioner who runs the conference every year.

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