The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 10.31 Obama's Cancel Culture Call-Out, Harley Quinn, Twitter vs Facebook Controversy & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Thursday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. And hey, if you like these longer episodes that we've been putting out, let us know, hit that like button. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to punch you in the throat. But with that said, let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're gonna talk about today is pervert news. Pervert news should legitimately be its own segment.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Maybe. It already feels like our videos are getting fucked over this week. Main point, if you don't know, one of the smartest, most interesting things, to me at least, that Pornhub does, right? An adult, I was about to say dispensary, that's disgusting. Destination, that's the word I was looking for. One of the interesting things that they do is every now and then they share analytics. And this year, around Halloween, of course, it's today,

Starting point is 00:00:38 they shared the most popular searches for costumes and characters. Now unsurprisingly, and I'm kind of probably exposing myself with that statement, Harley Quinn came in at number one, then followed by the Joker. It then kind of gets more general. Teacher, maid, succubus, bunny, kitty cat. And then the list goes on.

Starting point is 00:00:54 But then, interestingly, they also share the different searches between men and women. Right, so not most searched by men or women, but most searched comparing men versus women. And for men, we saw Jean Grey, Dark Phoenix, Elvira, Captain Marvel, the devil. And then the most popular for women was Cowboy, Michael Myers, okay. Then a quick pullback to Harry Potter, followed by the web slinger himself, Spider-Man.

Starting point is 00:01:18 And so yeah, there it is. And in general, once again, I love seeing the analytics for stuff like this. You know, we get this kind of quick general insight on this thing that a lot of people don't openly talk about. Even looking at kind of some of the themes, the trends here, it feels like there's an interesting conversation around power differentials

Starting point is 00:01:32 and how that works in a human being's brain connected to attraction or temporary lust. I don't know, it's just something that's interesting to me. Maybe it's interesting to you, but at the very least, feel free to use this new information as a way to create the most awkward icebreaker for someone that's in a costume that was mentioned tonight.

Starting point is 00:01:48 I take no credit or responsibility for how those conversations play out. Happy Halloween and you're welcome and I'm sorry. And then I want to talk about and highlight this story regarding cancel culture. You know, on this show over the years, we've talked about a vast number of people and situations where, you know, the general idea is,

Starting point is 00:02:03 okay, this person's canceled. This person did this bad thing and now they're locked in a box. That is who they are forever. Throw them out in the trash. And around this kind of thinking, we saw this clip of former president Barack Obama going viral, where in part he says, This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.

Starting point is 00:02:40 People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you. And I think that one danger I see among young people, particularly on college campuses, Malia and I talk about this, but I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of the way of me making change

Starting point is 00:03:09 is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that's enough like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or use the word wrong verb or then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because man you see how woke i was i called you out that's not activism that's not bringing about change you know if if all you're doing is casting stones uh you know you're probably not going to get that far. And, you know, following that, while of course nothing is universal, we saw a lot of bipartisan support around that idea.

Starting point is 00:03:49 And obviously, you know, all actions aren't equal. Like someone having said a stupid or really offensive thing is not the equivalent to someone like throwing a baby in a dumpster. You know, it's the general idea around the real world situations and the seemingly everyday canceling of someone or another that I think hearing these words is important.

Starting point is 00:04:06 What I would say is for maybe someone that doesn't agree with this, right? You think you're kind of the last bastion of good. Time has a fun way of humbling you. We are all humans, we are all flawed. You give someone enough time and they will make a mistake. They'll make a poorly thought decision, they'll make a bad move.

Starting point is 00:04:24 And those who expect or demand perfection will constantly be disappointed. The pursuit of perfection, I think, is fine, right? That's just trying to be the best version of yourself. But also, fun enough, when time isn't humbling you, it also allows you opportunity. Opportunity to hopefully change and grow. But yeah, understand I say this as someone that's not kind of like speaking down to you off of a cliff, but really like over the course of 13 years, someone who has lived this. I'm talking about on both sides of it. Yeah, that's where I'll end that one. And then let's talk about this just kind of crazy story out of Colorado. And after we kind of go through the roller coaster of it, I'm really fascinated to know where you land as far as your opinion.

Starting point is 00:05:01 And this story has a few moving pieces, but the main point is back in 2015, an armed shoplifting suspect by the name of Robert Jonathan Seacat fled a Walmart prompting a police chase. According to the affidavit, officers followed his vehicle until Seacat parked his car, got out, and hopped a fence by a highway. He then was able to cross all the lanes of traffic, despite there being highway speed level traffic on those roads, and then he climbed a fence

Starting point is 00:05:19 onto the other side. He then continued on foot until he ended up barricading himself in a stranger's home in the suburbs of Denver. Now the person who owned the home was a man by the name of Leo Leck. He bought the house foot until he ended up barricading himself in a stranger's home in the suburbs of Denver. Now the person who owned the home was a man by the name of Leo Leck. He bought the house for his son, his son's girlfriend, and her nine-year-old son.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Regarding the occupants of the house, when Seacat broke in, reportedly the nine-year-old was the only one present. The child saying that he was home alone watching YouTube videos when he heard the home alarm being activated. He saw Seacat, noticed the gun. Then saying that Seacat told him

Starting point is 00:05:42 he didn't want to cause any harm, he was just looking for a vehicle. The boy was later able to leave the home without injury. And Seacat wound up in the garage attempting to use one of the gun, then saying that Seacat told him he didn't want to cause any harm, he was just looking for a vehicle. The boy was later able to leave the home without injury. And Seacat wound up in the garage attempting to use one of the cars, but by that time, police were already in the driveway. Now at this point, according to the court's ruling, Seacat made the very intelligent decision

Starting point is 00:05:56 of firing a shot at police officers. I guess because he was like, I should definitely try to get as many years as possible in prison. You know, he fires, this allows officers to deem the situation high risk. They then reportedly attempt to negotiate for five hours. This fails, they then begin to employ tactics

Starting point is 00:06:09 that eventually destroy the home. The court ruling saying that officers fired several rounds of gas munition into the home, breached the home's door with a Bearcat armored vehicle so they could send in a robot to deliver a throw phone to Seacat, and used explosives to create sight lines and points of entry to the home.

Starting point is 00:06:23 They also sent in a team to apprehend Seacat, but then they exited when Seacat fired his gun. They then used the Bearcat to open multiple holes in the home and again, sent officers inside, who were then able to successfully apprehend and disarm Seacat, who, by the way, ended up being convicted on 17 felony counts and sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Starting point is 00:06:40 But the main point of this story wasn't Bearcat versus Seacat, which by the way way is definitely the title of a Michael Bay movie that I would still probably watch. It'd be a matinee. The story that we're actually talking about today is the home, because all in, this standoff reportedly lasted 19 hours

Starting point is 00:06:54 and rendered Lex's home uninhabitable. According to the Denver Post, the cost of building a new home was high. There were reports saying that the house was appraised at 580,000, that insurance gave them 345,000. He then ended up taking out a $600,000 mortgage loan to build the new house.

Starting point is 00:07:07 And I will say at this point, I guess I ignorantly believed that the city, right, they fill in whatever the gap is. Right, my only experience in this world is action movies, when someone's like, you caused $5 million in damages. I've got the mayor up my ass and how we're gonna pay for it.

Starting point is 00:07:21 Turns out, no, according to the report, the city ends up offering Leck $5,000. Zulek turns down this offer. He ends up actually suing the city of Greenwood Village, as well as a few police officers, here alleging violations of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which for the non-Fifth Amendment stands,

Starting point is 00:07:37 it states that private property cannot be taken for public use without compensation. And the reason we're talking about this today is the court's ruling has come in and it says that the city is actually not responsible for the damages. With the ruling saying, because the officers damaged the Lex's home

Starting point is 00:07:49 while attempting to apprehend a criminal suspect, the district court reasoned their actions fell within the scope of the state's police powers and not the power of eminent domain. Right, so essentially saying that it doesn't violate the clause because the police had to do their job. Also following this ruling, you obviously had Lek not happy about the decision.

Starting point is 00:08:04 Also saying to NPR, "'Under no circumstances in this country "'should the government be able to blow up your house "'and render a family homeless. "'The family was thrown out into the street "'without any recourse. "'There needs to be a line drawn "'for what police departments can do

Starting point is 00:08:15 "'and what they need to do to compensate citizens "'for this kind of damage. "'I didn't want to sue anyone for millions, "'I just wanted fair market value for my house.'" And on the other side of this, you had the city of Greenwood Village defending the court's decision, saying the courts have recognized

Starting point is 00:08:26 that while these types of events present difficult questions, the police should value life over property and may act pursuant to their police powers accordingly. And as far as what happens from here, you know, this could obviously go to another court. And in fact, several reports have said that LEC is actually considering trying to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.

Starting point is 00:08:40 But ultimately, that is where we are with this story. And like I said, I'm really fascinated to know, what are your thoughts on this? And then let's talk about this just massive news coming from Twitter. It actually dropped as we were releasing yesterday's episode. Yesterday, we saw the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, announce that the platform will soon ban all political ads.

Starting point is 00:08:57 And in a series of posts, Jack Dorsey talked about why the platform made this decision. And among those reasons, he said, "'We believe political message reach "'should be earned, not bought. "'Also that, while internet advertising "'is incredibly powerful and very effective "'for commercial advertisers,

Starting point is 00:09:10 "'that power brings significant risks to politics "'where it can be used to influence votes "'to affect the lives of millions. "'And internet political ads present entirely new challenges "'to civic discourse. "'Machine learning-based optimization of messaging "'and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, "'and deepfakes,

Starting point is 00:09:25 all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale. Dorsey also saying that initially they debated only removing candidates' ads, but then noted that they scrapped that decision because ads featuring political issues present a way to circumvent. Also saying he believes that there would have been

Starting point is 00:09:37 a basic lack of fairness to such a move. Also with this move, we've seen a new question regarding fairness. You know, you have incumbents, newcomers, right? So you have a politician already in office. Wouldn't this policy make it harder for say, an unknown to gain traction? Which Dorsey seemed to address those points,

Starting point is 00:09:50 saying that some might see this move as favoring incumbents. However, he has also said that many social movements have reached a quote, massive scale without any political advertising. And Dorsey ended all of this by saying that Twitter will publish the final policy by November 15th and that it will go into effect on November 22nd. Also noting that the one exception to this rule

Starting point is 00:10:04 would be allowing ads in support of voter registration. Obviously, this is a huge announcement, not only internationally, but of course domestically, we have the upcoming 2020 elections. Now, of course, a big thing to note is the fact that Twitter will still be keeping any posts made by any politicians, right? It is still a fact that back in June,

Starting point is 00:10:19 Twitter said that it would allow misleading posts from politicians, though notably there it also claimed that they would demote those posts and tag them as false. But I just wanted to quickly point that out because those are two separate issues that, you know, that does still affect the same thing. Now regarding the change around ads, of course there were a lot of big reactions.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Some of the most notable to me though were those in the political world. For example, you had President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager calling the move nothing more than a partisan attack, saying in a statement, "'Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions "'of dollars of potential revenue, "'a very dumb decision for their stockholders.'

Starting point is 00:10:47 "'This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives "'since Twitter knows President Trump "'has the most sophisticated online program ever known.'" Meanwhile, on the other side of things, you saw a spokesperson for former Vice President Joe Biden say, "'It would be unfortunate to suggest "'that the only option available to social media companies

Starting point is 00:11:00 "'is to do so as the full withdrawal "'of political advertising, but when faced with a choice "'between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out. But also, I think to note here that is not surprising, earlier this month Biden urged Twitter and other platforms like Facebook to ban misleading political ads. We also saw representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jump into the mix, saying, This is a good call. Technology and social media especially has a powerful responsibility in preserving the integrity of our elections. And then adding, I believe that if a company cannot

Starting point is 00:11:27 or does not wish to run basic fact checking on paid political advertising, then they should not run paid political ads at all. Now, of course, with this news, there is a very obvious elephant in the room here, Facebook. And more specifically, does this move pressure Facebook to change its policy? And just last week, we saw the CEO of Facebook,

Starting point is 00:11:42 Mark Zuckerberg, testify before Congress, defending the platform's decision to not ban or label misleading ads and posts from politicians. And as we talked about, we then saw more than 250 Facebook employees sign a message asking Zuckerberg to change that policy. And notably in that letter, those employees saying free speech and paid speech are not the same thing.

Starting point is 00:11:57 And adding, our current policies on fact-checking people in political office or those running for office are a threat to what Facebook stands for. So among other things, they asked Zuckerberg to hold all ads to the same standard and to restrict political ads from being targeted to custom audiences. But ultimately it appears as Zuckerberg saw those concerns

Starting point is 00:12:12 was like, we love, you know, just open discourse at Facebook, but fuck y'all. And we learned that Zuckerberg appears to be sticking to his plan thanks to a post that actually kind of funny enough was published a little more than an hour after Dorsey's announcement. Though I should say at least from Facebook's side, it's probably kind of happenstance.

Starting point is 00:12:26 This post appears to be a planned third quarter report. Right, so it was probably already written by the time that Dorsey made the Twitter announcement. Although it brings up the question of, well, did Dorsey time it this way on purpose? But main point, in the Facebook post, Zuckerberg directly addressed political ads saying, "'Google, YouTube, and most internet platforms

Starting point is 00:12:41 "'run these same ads. "'Most cable networks run these same ads. "'And of course, national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations. I think there are good reasons for this. In a democracy, I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians or the news. And although I've considered

Starting point is 00:12:54 whether we should not carry these ads in the past and I'll continue to do so, on balance so far, I've thought we should continue. Zuckerberg then continued saying it would also be hard to define where to draw the line. He then pointed to transparency, noting Facebook's ad library, which archives all political ads,

Starting point is 00:13:08 who saw them and how much was spent on them. Zuckerberg then went on to say that the decision wasn't driven by money, saying that political ads make up less than 0.5% of all Facebook revenue. Zuckerberg also addressing recent concerns that he's trying to appease conservative politicians, saying, frankly, if our goal,

Starting point is 00:13:20 we're trying to make either side happy, then we're not doing a very good job because I'm pretty sure everyone is frustrated with us. Our values on voice and free expression are not partisan. But unfortunately in our current environment a lot of people look at every decision through the lens of whether it's going to help or hurt the candidate they want in winning their next election.

Starting point is 00:13:35 But of course, following that post you still had people saying, well, if it's only gonna make up 0.5% of your revenue it is not driven by money, then why not follow Twitter and just remove the option? Which I will say regarding argument structure I will say Facebook, they did a really smart thing, right? Among others, they specifically name drop Google and YouTube, kind of using the group as a shield, right? Essentially saying, hey, we're not the big bad, look at all these other guys. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:13:59 ultimately with this story, I would really love to know your thoughts regarding this move by Twitter and kind of the stance from Facebook here You think that this move from Twitter is the right thing or at the very least a good first step? Essentially the company acknowledging that there is this massive problem. It's an imperfect world No one really knows how to fully handle it But their choice is to not monetize and profit off of it or do you think that it's a bad move and it's been interesting Because the argument here it's some Trump supporters, actually some Trump opponents. Right, do you think that this is a partisan move

Starting point is 00:14:27 aimed to hurt Donald Trump? Or do you think that this is something that either one, hurts Donald Trump's opponents, or two, hurts kind of newcomers versus incumbents? And I don't know how much Twitter advertising Donald Trump needs with his 66 plus million followers. Right, and don't even consider the presidential election. What if you're someone like Joe or Jane Blow

Starting point is 00:14:44 that's running for a house seat? An incumbent, of course, is going to have name value. There are a lot of votes that are just based off of familiarity. And all of a sudden, this newcomer can't specifically target people in their district. Is that gonna make it harder for new people to break through? And in general, I think that this is just

Starting point is 00:14:56 a fascinating move and story. I feel very much like I'm still trying to digest it, compare, contrast. And of course, with that, I'd love to pass the question off to you. What are 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 us with a like.

Starting point is 00:15:08 Also, if you're new here, be sure you subscribe. Definitely tap that bell to turn on notifications. Also, if you're looking for more to watch, you should definitely check out that brand new podcast I did with Jax Films and or that deep dive we just put out on Rogue Rocket. You can click or tap right there to watch either of those right now.

Starting point is 00:15:21 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 next time.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 10.31 Obama's Cancel Culture Call-Out, Harley Quinn, Twitter vs Facebook Controversy & More

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