The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 10.2 Controversial Fake News Law, Shane Dawson, Ace Family Backlash, Harvard's Ruling, & More

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

Happy hump day! Shoutout to Keeps! Go to https://www.keeps.com/defranco to get 50% off your first order of hair loss treatment. Check out my conversation with Nikita Dragun: https://youtu.be/vrC--h_hR98 Check out the latest Rogue Rocket Deep Dive: https://youtu.be/0yru5dhyrvU ✩ MY NEW PODCAST ✩ ✭Listen on Anchor: http://Anchor.fm/AConversationWith ✭Watch: https://youtu.be/woe_W4VXdho ✩ FOLLOW ME ✩ ✭TWITTER: http://Twitter.com/PhillyD ✭FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/DeFrancoNation ✭INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/phillydefranco/ ✩ SUPPORT THE SHOW ✩ ✭Buy Merch: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✭Lemme Touch Your Hair: http://BeautifulBastard.com ✭Paid Subscription: http://DeFrancoElite.com ✩ TODAY IN AWESOME ✩ ✭ Check out https://phil.chrono.gg/ for 70% OFF “Tower of Time” only available until 9 AM! ✭ 24 Hours With Maisie Williams: https://youtu.be/m2OuV0sEa9o ✭ Jonathan Van Ness's Travel Routine, From New York to LA: https://youtu.be/P1nkN1ZhL-w ✭ Cillian Murphy Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters: https://youtu.be/hkO8qXCFYWA ✭ The Gentlemen Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/2B0RpUGss2c ✭ Dove Cameron Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions: https://youtu.be/hDDTUb_1cQc ✭The Rock Surprises His Biggest Fan On Her 100th Birthday: https://digg.com/2019/the-rock-surprises-his-biggest-fan-on-her-100th-birthday ✭ Secret Link:  https://youtu.be/ylhsbfQTPDQ ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Judge Rules Harvard Did Not Engage in Asian American Admissions Discrimination: https://roguerocket.com/?p=15304 Check our deep dive on the lawsuit: https://youtu.be/hd2qtQuGDts Singapore Enacts Fake News Law: https://roguerocket.com/?p=15302 Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star Air New Series: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/beauty-hair/celebrity-hair-makeup/a29339895/beautiful-world-jeffree-star-shane-dawson/ Ace Family Works at Restaurant: https://twitter.com/miafrda/status/1179102468548022272 ✩ MORE NEWS NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ BTS Fans Slam Article for Misrepresenting K-pop: https://roguerocket.com/?p=15303 ————————————     Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg Produced by: Amanda Morones Art Director: Brian Borst Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Cory Ray ———————————— #DeFranco #ShaneDawson #AceFamily ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. I'm Nikita Dragun and let's just jump into it. Bitch. I'm charging extra for that one. Honestly, that one was so good. Yet another PDS host I'm having to fire Nikita Dragun. There just weren't enough controversies around her. That said, despite Nikita's firing,

if you'd like to listen to our brand new podcast and conversation together on A Conversation With, you can listen to it using the audio platform of your choice using that anchor link down below, or you can watch it on youtube.com slash A Convo With where I just, before actually uploading this video, uploaded the video there, which by the way, by the time this video goes up,

I think we're about to pass 100,000 subscribers, so thank you. But yeah, been doing these every Wednesday, is going to keep doing it, I love it. And this one with Nikita was really interesting because I think no one would expect me to invite her on, but I think that's also exactly why I did it, right? A new day, new people, new conversations, new viewpoints.

But with all of that said, buckle up, hit that like button and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're gonna talk about today is Harvard, a college that of course was made popular by Daniel Cohn, which is a reference maybe four of you get. Not speaking to the right crowd on that one, but we are actually talking about Harvard. As you might remember, we've covered it on the show.

There's this lawsuit that says that Harvard discriminated against Asian American applicants. We actually did a deep dive on this back in December. If you want to watch the full details, I'll link to it down below. But to give you a quick summary, this lawsuit was brought in 2014 by a group called Students for Fair Admission.

And it claimed that Harvard was unfairly weighing race when it came to the university's admissions process. By basically saying it'd use racial balancing techniques to set a quota for different minorities. With the SFFA then alleging that Asian American applicants were being forced to meet higher standards. And that because they argued that Asian American students were consistently performing better academically

than other minority races. But when they looked at the racial breakdowns between Harvard's freshman classes for different years, they claimed that the percentage of admitted students from different racial groups was about the same each year. That being around 20% Asian American, 15% African American, 12% Latino, with the other rough half of students being white.

They also accused Harvard of stereotyping Asian students in the university's personal rating system, which includes aspects like the applicant's background and their character. They claimed admissions officers had used stereotypical language, describing them as quiet, bland, or not exciting. And so ultimately, they were asking Harvard

to stop looking at race in the admissions process. Now on the other side of this, you had Harvard defending itself, saying that while it took race into account, it was only one of about 200 other factors. Some of those include in class year, gender, SAT, ACT scores, GPA, also intended career, and whether or not your parents went to an Ivy League school.

And with all of that said, you had people saying that this could be a landmark case because the SFFA was essentially calling for an end to affirmative action. And so the reason we're talking about this today is that a judge has now rejected the SFFA's claim, saying the court finds no persuasive documentary evidence of any racial animus or conscious prejudice

against Asian Americans. The judge also saying that the university shows commitment to recruiting students who are, quote, exceptional across multiple dimensions. And concluded, the court will not dismantle a very fine admissions program that passes constitutional muster solely because it could do better.

With Judge Alison Burroughs then saying that the university only ever used race as a plus factor. Right, so essentially saying it only considered race to help students not hurt them. You also had Burroughs throwing out the claims of stereotyping in the personal rating section, saying she found no evidence that the admissions officers had looked at Asian students differently than other races,

adding that students from multiple races had been referred to as quiet, shy, or understated. So all of that now means that Harvard can continue to consider race to build diverse classes. But of course, while Burroughs did note that Harvard's admission process isn't perfect, perhaps the biggest conclusion that Burroughs reached was that race-neutral alternatives are not sufficient.

And in fact, she says that race-conscious admissions are actually needed to ensure diversity at Harvard. She rejected ideas like Harvard admitting every applicant with a perfect GPA, saying that the university would have to expand its freshman class by 400% each year. Then reject every student without a perfect GPA, regardless of athletic, extracurricular, or other academic achievements or life experiences.

She was also skeptical of other ideas like looking at socioeconomic status instead of race, saying she feared such a process really wouldn't be race neutral. But yeah, that's the story. It's done, but of course not done. The SFFA is expected to appeal this ruling, which would send it to the first court of appeals, with SFFA president Edward Blum saying that he would appeal this to the Supreme Court if necessary, which I will say is in no way surprising, right? This is kind of the expected path with things like this, right? because yes, this case was about Asian Americans, but you know, the entire topic concerns affirmative action overall.

It's been a massively divisive topic for decades. But also, actually, to backtrack a moment, we've actually seen Harvard make some changes since the SFFA brought the lawsuit. In the admissions process for this year's freshman class, Harvard directed its admissions officers to quote, "'Not taking applicant's race or ethnicity into account "'in making any of the ratings other than the overall rating.

It also changed its personal rating criteria with officers now being asked to consider qualities of character. This including things like courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, leadership, maturity, genuineness, selflessness, humility, resiliency, judgment, citizenship, and spirit and comradery with peers.

And so with those changes, with the ruling that we're now seeing, it'll be interesting to see what Harvard and even also what other schools do from here. But of course, with all of that said, I'd love to know your thoughts on this one. Then of course, briefly I said we'd talk about it when it was released.

Shane Dawson released the first episode of his new docu-series, right? The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star, which actually both follows Jeffree Star as well as Shane Dawson. There's really not much to say from this episode. It seems like it's kind of an establishment episode. Though there were moments that appeared to kind of tease

kind of the same thing that the trailer teased, that there would be some sort of mention of the James Charles scandal. So, you know, usually it'd be James Charles, Jaclyn Hill, whoever's free. Yeah, that's what we like then. Yes. Next to them.

Got it. Got it. Right there. And kind of the most notable thing, I mean, regarding news is that at the end of this video, when they tease the next episode, it appears that they are going to go into the business of the beauty world, which I would personally find fascinating.

There appears to be at least a tease or talks about real margins on products. And if Jeffree does share real margins, I mean, that could completely shake up the cosmetics industry, which obviously is huge. That notable not only for creator to consumer, but even what the split would be between Jeffree Star and a Shane Dawson on a project together.

And I'm really fascinated in that because kind of this mixture of personal relationships with business proposals and business ventures, how does that work together? It appears to be a world just filled with accusations. So kind of any transparency or insider look, I think would be amazing. But we'll see, Shane and his shooter editor, Andrew,

they're like masters of the tease. But yeah, I guess ultimately we'll have to wait and see. And to those that actually watched the first episode, what are your thoughts? But, and it is another quickie, there was some YouTube backlash today, this time involving the semi-frequent contestants that is the Ace Family, specifically Austin McBroom

and Catherine Paiz, and if I'm mispronouncing that, I do not care. But there's this now viral video of them that has been spread around, I'll let you see it. Guys, we are literally working right now at a restaurant. Like, Austin has been making food for the past hour and I've been taking orders. Do you understand how cool that is?

The main tweet of this video that went viral had the caption, LMFAO, I fucking hate millionaires. Are you kidding me? People like Michael J. Murphy tweeting, ace family is the worst man. Drew Gooden tweeting, imagine being so disconnected from reality that you get this excited about pretending to work in a restaurant for two hours.

Even a person I consider to be like the nicest person on YouTube, Simply Nailogical, Christine, tweeting, wow, what a challenge. Working a traditional job, like 99% of your subscribers "'or their parents have.'" And here's what I'll say based off of what I've seen, because they also ended up posting a much longer YouTube video around this.

I understand that I'd probably get more views, some love, or you bash on someone that's large. I personally don't think it's that deep. Like, I mean, if the criticism is, "'Hey, look at these multi-millionaires "'who every video that I've ever seen of theirs "'is kind of like, look at our crazy expensive dope shit that they're disconnected from the everyday person

and their experience, yeah. Them experiencing a normal person's life is like if you went to one of those old timey places and they're like, we're gonna churn butter today. You're like, what, other people used to do this? But out of all the things to take shots at them for, this is arguably one of the weaker ones. And while yes, they did make this video for content

and because they are who they are, they're not gonna actually understand what it is to live this life every day. I personally believe, and this is kind of now less about their video and kind of more just random advice. I know some young people watch me. Everyone at some point should work a server job or kind of just a food dealing with the public job.

It taught me how to interact with other human beings. It taught me how to deal with irate people, how to get people to like me more, read body language. Also just the experience in general of serving someone else. It kind of grounds you. I'm personally thankful that I had those experiences in my life. And then let's talk about this really interesting story

coming out of Singapore. So today a controversial bill widely known as the fake news law officially went into effect in Singapore. Now the law, which is officially called the protection from online falsehoods and manipulation act was passed by Singapore's parliament back in May. And according to reports, it will now be illegal to spread what they call any false statements of fact

that could potentially pose a threat to public tranquility and the friendly relations of Singapore with other countries, right? So the idea sounds pretty straightforward, but, and it is a big but, what makes the law extremely controversial is the fact that it gives the sole power to determine what is and is not fake news

to government ministers. And the threshold for determining what is fake news is rather low. And according to Channel News Asia, a minister simply needs to decide if something is a falsehood which is defined as a statement of fact that is false or misleading. Then if that minister says it is in the public interest to take action against the falsehood, they can order whatever content they decide is fake news to be taken down or have a correction put up next to it. Government ministers can also force tech companies like Facebook and Google to block accounts or websites that they decide is fake news to be taken down or have a correction put up next to it. Government ministers can also force tech companies like Facebook and Google to block accounts or websites that they say are spreading false information. And while the government has said that anyone impacted

by the law can file an appeal, and that appeals process will be quick and cheap, the consequences of being found guilty of posting false information are extremely high. Under the law, companies that are found guilty of spreading fake news can face fines up to one million in Singapore dollars, which comes to around 722,000 in US dollars. And for individuals who are found guilty of spreading fake news can face fines up to 1 million in Singapore dollars, which comes to around 722,000 in US dollars.

And for individuals who are found guilty, you can face up to 10 years in prison. With Singapore's prime minister saying that the law is necessary to quote, "'Hold online news sources and platforms accountable "'if they proliferate deliberate online falsehood.'" Adding, if we do not protect ourselves, hostile parties will find it a simple matter

to turn different groups against one another and cause disorder in our society. But with this, critics of the law have said that this is a clear attempt to stifle free speech and dissent, with many arguing that it gives way too much power and authority to the government without providing oversight for government abuse. And to that point, opponents have pointed to Singapore's

mixed record on protecting press freedoms and political dissent. For example, in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 151st out of 180 countries for press freedoms. Right, meaning Singapore was ranked in one of the worst positions for a country that considers itself a democracy.

And notably, it placed them below countries that are well-known for censoring any kind of political opposition, like Russia and Myanmar. And so the activists, experts, and rights groups who have openly criticized this law worry that it will be used as a political tool for censorship. Speaking to CNN, Human Rights Watch Asia Deputy Director Phil Robertson

said that the bill will be used for political purposes. Also noting the timing that it's coming right before elections are set to happen in just a few months. And adding, the Singapore government has a long history of calling everything they disagree with as false and misleading. We also had the International Commission of Jurists, a group of judges and lawyers, hitting on this in a statement before the law was passed, arguing that it would create a real risk that the law will be misused to clamp down on opinions or information critical of the government. You even had members of parliament speaking out against the bill, arguing that it was an overextension of government power, with one opposition lawmaker saying,

To introduce such a bill is not what the government claims, to defend democracy and public interest. It is more like the actions of a dictatorial government that will resort to any means to hold on to absolute power. We also have others arguing that it will give Singapore too much power over big tech firms that have a large presence in Singapore, in places like Facebook, Twitter, and Google,

which all have their Asian headquarters in the city-state. And to that point, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East and Southeast Asia said in a statement, this law would give Singapore overwhelming leverage over the likes of Facebook and Twitter to remove whatever the government determines is misleading. This is an alarming scenario.

While tech firms must take all steps to make digital spaces safe for everyone, this does not provide governments an excuse to interfere with freedom of expression or rule over the newsfeed, which is why it's also not surprising that Google and Facebook have both opposed this law. Although a thing to note here is that one of the most concerning parts of this law to some is that it doesn't appear to just apply to posts made publicly on Facebook or

Twitter, but rather it could actually be applied to closed private messaging apps and chat groups like WhatsApp, which is extremely popular in Singapore. So there's concern that not only will the government read citizens' private messages, but they could also potentially jail them for up to 10 years for what they say. But ultimately, that is where we are with this now. And I wanted to share this story because, yes, I know that 99.7% of people watching this video, they're not from Singapore. But I think it's incredibly helpful to look outward, especially at a time where, you know, people are constantly talking about the threat of fake news. We've seen the impact.

There's a constant conversation of, well, how do you crack down on it while not cracking down on free speech? Right, who's deciding what is real or not? Is this situation going to be manipulated so governments can control their people and stifle free speech? I personally believe that is what we are seeing in Singapore,

but ultimately that's where we are with this story now. We'll have to wait to see what happens, but of course, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. And that's where I'm going to end today's show. And hey, if you liked today's video, hit that like button. Also, if you're new here, you want more of this in your life, be sure to hit that subscribe button and definitely tap that bell to turn on notifications. Also, remember if you're not 100% filled in today, we have that brand new conversation with podcast with Nikita Dragon, or maybe you just missed yesterday's show, you wanna catch up, you can click or tap right there to watch either of those.

But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in, I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.