The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 10.4 Billie Eilish Wants To Punish You, What "Couch Guy" TikTok Exposes, Facebook Outage & Whistleblower

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

NEW MERCH JUST LAUNCHED -  https://beautifulbastard.com/ before it’s all SOLD OUT!!! Watch More News: https://youtu.be/JSqVqelNRXI TEXT ME! [phone] Get More Phil: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco -- 02:06 - Couch Guy and His Girlfriend Respond to Viral TikTok Drama 06:07 - South Korean Internet Provider Sues Netflix after “Squid Game” Increased Network Usage 07:45 - Billie Eilish Slams Texas Law 10:14 - SCOTUS to Hear Major Issues as it Starts Highly Controversial New Term 11:37 - Facebook Whistleblower Says Platforms Prioritizes Revenue Over Public Safety 15:56 - Pandora Papers Detail Offshore Banking by the Wealthy -- ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Couch Guy and His Girlfriend Respond to Viral TikTok Drama: https://roguerocket.com/2021/10/04/couch-guy-girlfriends-surprise-visit/ South Korean Internet Provider Sues Netflix after “Squid Game” Increased Network Usage: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadband-firm-sues-netflix-after-traffic-surge-squid-game-2021-10-01/ Billie Eilish Slams Texas Law: https://roguerocket.com/2021/10/04/billie-eilish-slams-tx-law/ SCOTUS to Hear Major Issues as it Starts Highly Controversial New Term: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-abortion-gun-control-religious-right/2021/10/02/c5f7487c-22b3-11ec-8200-5e3fd4c49f5e_story.html Facebook Whistleblower Says Platforms Prioritizes Revenue Over Public Safety: https://roguerocket.com/2021/10/04/facebook-whistleblower/ Pandora Papers Detail Offshore Banking by the Wealthy: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-europe-middle-east-media-d94d7d718a15f89f6df63520b53908ec ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Major Oil Spill Off Southern California Coast Poses Environmental Threat: https://roguerocket.com/2021/10/04/oil-spill-california-coast/ China Indicates More Restrictions on Game Developers, No “Moral Choices” https://roguerocket.com/2021/10/04/china-indicates-more-restrictions-on-game-developers-no-moral-choices/  ——————————     Executive Producer: Amanda Morones  Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxwell Enright Art Department: Brian Borst, William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Cory Ray, Brian Espinoza, Maddie Crichton, Lili Stenn, Neena Pesqueda Production Team: Zack Taylor, Emma Leid ———————————— #DeFranco #BillieEilish #CouchGuy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup you beautiful bastards! Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show and hey! So excited to get to finally announce us the biggest and best drop of the year our October drop is now live! Yeah! Let's go through the awesomeness starting off with Y'all Wanted Tie-Dye so BOOM! Two emotionally exhausted shirts just for you

and if you really love that burnt orange color I've also got you covered with that sleek hoodie. Also we wanted to be a little more exhausted and inclusive right? People have been saying, you know, I'm not just emotionally exhausted. Sometimes I'm physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, exhausted of people, shit. So boom, the sequel, Just Exhausted. Available for you on our premium and ultra comfy shirts,

hoodies, and in those cropped hoodies that you ladies have been making our best seller every drop. I also requested the return of the one day we'll all be skeletons and this is awesome. Both minimal and loud and proud. We want the gold foil here, clean and sleek on the front, big and loud on the back. Also, yes, it's available in a shirt, a crew neck, a cropped hoodie, and for the first time ever,

please stop yelling at me, it's happening now, a zip up hoodie, grab it, and now you can be nice to me again. Also, we just dropped our awesome Vert stack Don't Be Stupid gear. And since it's been one of our most popular lines, I threw several colorways at you. Finally, for this drop, the most requested items,

specifically from people who bought don't be stupid Stupid mask just in time to make your Thanksgiving dinner Interesting and you'll look good while doing it the Vax line available in Multicolor red and white with some sweatpants to complete the look and we'll say I thought y'all were all talk with this one But this one's already like it's flying. So if you want these for sure grab them beautiful Instigating bastards, I suppose. But that's also true with everything in this October drop. So grab what you want while you can,

because of course, like with every drop that's here now, and then I'm never gonna offer the same thing again. All right, we've got seven days, although certain sizes for certain products may sell out. So once again, get it while you can. Yeah, with that said, essentially today's sponsor spot, because I'm sponsoring myself today out of the way, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show.

Hit that like button Especially because one if you get this video to 100,000 likes five of you beautiful bastards later this week could win a thousand dollars And two if you hit a hundred thousand in the first 12 hours I will open up tomorrow's show in the pink crop top because honestly it feels like you guys are far more motivated by making me feel Uncomfortable than money. Yeah, welcome back and let's just jump into it. And the first thing that we're gonna talk about today, this is one of the most requested stories I've seen in a long time.

And just to preface it, it is a story that does not matter. Like unless you're one of three people, this is a story that does not affect you. It doesn't matter, but it is hooked people, like tens of millions of people at least. And some of you may have already guessed it now, but this is about Couch Guy, right? That viral TikTok.

The original video alone getting over 50 million views and it shows a TikTok user by the name of Lauren Zara surprising her boyfriend, Robbie, at college. And among the tens of millions of people who watch the clip, you have tens and hundreds of thousands of people commenting, many analyzing some frame by frame Robbie's behavior in the clip, identifying what they referred to as red flags,

saying things like, oh, he's not reacting enthusiastically enough. Why is he on the couch with all those girls? Hey, wait, does it look like the girl sitting next to him secretly handed him his phone back? And when I say that people have been breaking this down frame by frame, I mean it. But look at the beginning here. It looks like her hand is on his back. Like, that looks like a thumb and maybe a finger.

Rewind. You can see the phone in her hand right there. You can see the case right there. Boom. Leans forward. Give me my fricking phone. She's right here. Oh my God.

There it is. The phone's open on the camera. Same case. Also, we've gotten just a slew of parodies. I mean, a lot of them. And so with this going just ungodly viral, we saw Lauren defending their relationship in comments, saying that the phone was actually in Robbie's lap,

even having to post her own slow-mo vid. So you can see his hand and you can see that his phone is in his lap and he pulls out his phone. You can literally, I'll do it again. So yeah. Going on to say a number of things, including she knows all the girls in the room,

that she's happy with the relationship. She doesn't understand why people are making so many assumptions. Robbie then posting his own TikTok saying, "'Not everything is true crime. "'Don't be a parasocial creep. "'Get some fresh air. "'Take care.'"

Following that, there were a lot of reactions with many people accusing him of gaslighting, to which we saw him asking if people actually even knew what the term meant. Writing, gaslighting is a term for when someone leads you to question your own reality slash sanity. And asking if people could tell which of the following two scenarios is gaslighting and which one is not. Writing, are you being gaslit if someone on the internet tells you to get some fresh air after you scrutinize their private life? Or are you being gaslit if thousands of strangers call you delusional for claiming to know your own relationship better than they do? That in turn,

if you go through the comment section, was not received very well. Yeah, ultimately that is where this story ends. It seems like Lauren and Robbie are just trying to ignore the criticism, move on. You know what, I'll say with all this, right, because this was so requested, so many people asked me what my thoughts on this were. Also, oddly, like it wasn't just you beautiful bastards.

Like there were a ton of people in my real life sending me this clip where like, I imagine what happened with many of you going like, what do you think about this? And the truth of the matter is I have no idea because I don't know these people. I can watch through the video just like everyone else, but then I have to question how much am I projecting

onto these people? How much am I assuming? Right, the times that have been burnt in the past by a partner or two, like how does that play into how I'm receiving this information? Or like I could watch a video and be like, wow, he's acting really sketchy. But then also I just know a ton of awkward people.

Like they don't do good with surprises, they're awkward. And really you could write so many different narratives from this one clip. Or you could write up this whole narrative about how you have this guy cheating on his girlfriend who's so far away. You could also write a narrative that the girl's actually really clingy

and things have been awkward and he was like, I need some time. And then all of a sudden, boom, she shows up. Or you could say that he was really, really high and he was so very confused for a moment. And then even saying all that, I just feel weird because these are like everyday people all of a sudden cast into the limelight. Like a Kim Kardashian or whoever, they're, they're used to the scrutiny. Like they benefit from the scrutiny, but then you kind of throw it on like two random college students. It's all kind of

weird. And the way that social media works, especially stuff like this, it feels like we're all in a zoo. We go to these social media apps to look at the animals though sometimes we are the animals It's something I'm still trying to digest and understand fully but also with this story I'll say uh Nine out of ten people should not be in a long-distance relationship where they are in college that is a bad bad time and I'll Close this by saying one all y'all messy and two whether you're messy and overly involved in this or you're just now hearing about it Now I'd love to know your thoughts about any aspect of this story.

Then we should definitely talk about Squid Game and don't worry, I know that myself and every annoying TV pushing friend that you've had has been like, you gotta watch Squid Game, bro. Well, my recommendation still stands. Today's story is actually about Squid Game being too popular. It's currently projected that Squid Game will become Netflix's most watched show ever,

with many absolutely loving the South Korean thriller series also many in South Korea using The show to open up conversations around inequality in the country But the main reason that we're talking about this today is that it is so Popular that a South Korean internet provider is now suing Netflix following a massive surge in internet traffic In fact alleging that in the three years from May 2018 to last month when squid game was released, Netflix traffic has jumped 24 folds. 24X, 2400%, if you had one Apple, then all of a sudden you had 24 Apples. Do you understand the numbers here?

With the provider here, SK Broadband saying, Netflix, too many Apples. And have now asked a court to force Netflix to pay for the increased network usage as well as maintenance work related to the surge in traffic. Saying that Netflix needs to do this because they use SK's lines to deliver increasingly larger amounts of data heavy,

high definition videos to viewers. Notably, in their argument, SK said that YouTube and Netflix are the country's two biggest generators of internet traffic, yet they don't pay any network usage fees. Meanwhile, other big generators of traffic in the country like Amazon, Apple, and Facebook all do.

And so with all that, saying they want Netflix to hand over fees dating back to May of 2018, with an estimating that the platform would owe around 23 million US dollars just for the last year alone. And actually looking into this, things don't appear to be on Netflix side here. Court in the country already previously ruled

that Netflix should reasonably pay a network usage fee. We've also seen multiple lawmakers criticizing the practice of not paying usage fees. And of course, as you'd expect, Netflix has already appealed the ruling. The measure is going to be taken up again in December. We'll have to wait and see what happens, but it's going to be interesting

because there will be a ripple effect here. Then let's definitely talk about Texas and abortion because I feel like what's really been missing from this coverage is a man's point of view. Why has no one asked what I thought about this? He said jokingly. But no, these things have been in the news for different reasons.

For example, you had pieces of news like Billie Eilish performing at the Austin City Limits Festival over the weekend. During her set there, calling out the new controversial Texas abortion law going viral. Of course, recently we've seen a lot of attention on that law, banning abortion after six weeks before most people even know they're pregnant

and making no exceptions for cases of rape and incest. Also allowing citizens to sue anyone they believe violated the law or helped violate the law. While legally speaking, we're already seeing it face challenges, we've seen more and more people speaking out. Billie, for example, during her set explaining that she initially considered canceling her performance in Texas because of it when they made it a law I

Almost didn't want to do this show so Because I wanted to finish this place for allowing that to happen here It's you guys that are the victims and you deserve everything in the world. And we need to tell them to shut the f*** up. But they're then getting the crowd to stick their middle fingers up in the air and shouting. My body, my f***ing choice! While Billie Eilish obviously has a massive spotlight. By no means was she the only person speaking up over the weekend.

In cities all over the US, you had women's marches focused on protesting the law. Thousands gathering in Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, and more. Rallies, of course, being held in Texas as well. And actually with that, we heard from a lot of women in the state, including Marcia Jones, the executive director of the Afaias Center,

a Texas-based abortion rights organization, saying that she attended the DC rally to say, not only is abortion healthcare, but at my organization, we also believe it's self-care. You can no longer tell us what to do with our bodies. Also, something that seemed to be coming up was like staying there or moving away. Or like at the march in Austin,

you had a handful of women telling a local NPR affiliate that they're considering moving out of the state, that including a mother of four who was born and raised in Texas, saying two of her kids already left Texas, other people also saying that they would consider the move to protect their reproductive rights. But also you had other demonstrators holding their ground

saying they live in this state, they love this state, they don't want to leave. And so this debate has popped up of, if you're against this new Texas law, do you move or do you fight and stay? Even with that, it's like assuming you even have the resources to get out of the state. So with this, while obviously we're talking about Texas here

and whether you're a Texan or not, I think it's a little more universal. What would you do here? Based off a beautiful bastard audience polling, an incredible number of you are against the Texas law. So what would you do if you lived in the state? And then in news, and actually, I mean, this is a story that will also very likely touch

on Texas in part. The Supreme Court officially kicked off its new term today in what could be one of its most important and controversial sessions in recent history. As we've talked about before, the court's six to three conservative majority is set to hear a number of incredibly hot button cases. Arguably the most highly anticipated

is Mississippi's ban on most abortions after 15 weeks, where the state has explicitly asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and its decision. And as a result, the court's ruling here could have massive implications nationwide, especially because at least a dozen states have what are known as trigger laws that would ban abortion entirely if Roe is overturned.

Another major matter that the court will hear involves an NRA-backed challenge to New York's limitations on people carrying concealed weapons in public. That case also very significant because the high court has largely stayed away from matters of gun control issues for the better part of the last decade, despite urging from conservative justices. And so now with a stacked majority,

their decision could result in the expansion of gun rights. And beyond those two, there are also a large number of matters that the court is set to hear, including cases regarding religious rights in schools, as well as possibly a challenge to affirmative action. Though the justices have not said yet if they will take that one up. But regardless, there are a number of high stakes issues

here that will be decided. And all of it comes at a time when the court is facing a high level of scrutiny. So much in fact, that several conservative justices have recently spoken out about all the public backlash that they've been receiving. But that is pretty much where we are for now, because while the court is set to hear these cases

in the coming months, they usually don't announce their decisions until the end of their term next summer. So you have a long wait on your hands. Just the one apparently, I don't know what you're doing with the other. Then in easily the most shocking piece of news today, it turns out that Facebook

may not have your best interests in mind. Oh my God, what? We can't trust Facebook Who can we trust? But no this story is getting further insight into accusations being made against Facebook, right? Most recently we talked about those leaked internal Facebook slides I went to the Wall Street Journal in Congress which actually led to congressional hearings over the hold that Facebook has Overminers as well as how its platforms are affecting their mental health, which also gave us this amazing line. Will you commit to ending Finsta?

Also since the leak, we've seen Facebook indefinitely pausing its plans to release an Instagram for kids. Easily the biggest piece of news and update to this story happened last night when the anonymous whistleblower who leaked these documents was revealed last night on 60 Minutes. But they're turning out to be

a former Facebook product manager by the name of Frances Haugen. And she used this opportunity to speak out, also making some rather big claims. For example, saying a 2018 change to the platform's algorithm is driving hate speech and in turn real world violence. So you've always been picky about your produce. But now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian. So be it.

At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first. Restrictions apply. See in-store or online for details. You know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll off for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. And one of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is

polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions. Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money. With much of that claim looking to be backed up by the document that Francis leaked in which Facebook estimates that it takes action on as little as 3-5% of hate, as well as 6 tenths of a percent of violence and incitement despite being what they said was the best in the world at cracking down on it. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing

ethnic violence around the world. With Haugen saying that, not only does that include the Myanmar military using Facebook to incite a 2018 genocide, but also claiming that Facebook is responsible for the January 6th riots here in the US and adding, The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money. I've seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than

anything I'd seen before. And Haugen is not done yet. She's set to testify before a Senate committee on consumer protection and product safety tomorrow. There, she said she hopes to convince Congress to impose federal regulations on how social media companies monitor hate speech. Though it really might not take much convincing. We've already seen lawmakers calling the documents that she leaked bombshell. There also seems to be a pretty solid bipartisan agreement that something must be done. But also at the same time on the other side of this you have Facebook continuing to play down the claims against it with a

spokesperson for the company saying, Every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We've made important improvements to protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We've made important improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content." And adding, to suggest, we encourage bad content,

know about it, and do nothing is just not true. Company executive Nick Clegg adding the claim that the evidence does not support the idea that Facebook or social media more generally is the primary cause of polarization. But ultimately that is where this story ends. Though it is a developing situation,

we're gonna keep our eyes on the hearing tomorrow. See if new claims pop up, how lawmakers and Facebook respond if they do. And of course, with all that, I want to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts regarding Facebook or really any social media platform? Or when you hear talk about regulating big tech, right?

Regulating Facebook and all of a sudden, you know, that delves into hate speech, incitement, stuff like that. What are you thinking when you hear that? I really love to know your thoughts on what's happening here. And also, is there like a perfect solution or something that's at least better? But also, and you know this,

if you've been on social media at all today, the Facebook news does not stop there. Facebook, as well as two of its other platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp, all going down today. Though, as of right now, it doesn't appear that crash appears to be related to any kind of malicious activity. Instead, reports indicating this is a DNS issue.

And while the specifics there can be complicated, basically what it does is lock everyone out of the website. They are not completely uncommon, but this is a massive outage for Facebook since it's been going on for hours. And it's still not fixed, so obviously we're gonna have to keep our eyes on it. Still, always very interesting to see the reaction when everyone rushes over to Twitter to talk about when Facebook's down, because it really feels like everyone that uses Facebook hates Facebook, but then still continues to use it. But also like, there's gotta be some people that actually like it, right? Or are we all just like, yes, it's evil,

but it's also a tool. It's my evil tool, but nothing's perfect. And then we should definitely talk about the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, aka the ICIJ, releasing what's being called the Pandora Papers. They're the latest in a series of document dumps that if you kind of try to simplify it,

it shows that rich people are incredibly rich, also consisting of world leaders as well. 11.9 million files from companies that are used by the rich to create offshore accounts and tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Monaco, and Switzerland. All right, we're talking about places with extremely low tax rates and laws that help hide who owns what.

But these places being used by companies and people that specialize in making complex corporate and trust structures that further obscure the origin of the money to help clients hide their fortunes from their home country's tax authorities. And according to the ICIJ, on top of the billionaires that you'd expect hiding their money, about 35 current and former world leaders use tax havens.

It was also revealed that almost 300 public officials from 90 countries also take part in hiding their assets. And yeah, I mean, if we're honest with ourselves, right? The idea that rich people hire companies to hide their assets, right? That they're treated differently because they have more money than you, yeah. So while a lot of what's in these papers,

like they're huge, these leaks really don't do anything for most people other than confirm what they already knew. Obviously with nearly 12 million files in the Pandora Papers, there are a ton of things that need to be covered, but also hard to cover in one small bit. So what we're gonna focus on today

is what is drawing out the most headlines. Things like in the UK, the Labor Party's demands that the Conservatives return nearly 1 million dollars in donations that it took from businessman Mohammed a mercy with the issue being that a mercy was found to have helped facilitate what turned out to be a massive 220 million dollar bribe to the daughter of Uzbekistan's president with that We saw the Conservatives deny any wrongdoing saying that they vet all large donations But it is a story that appears to highlight how what may seem like legitimate public donations can come from illegitimate funds and that figuring

That out is extremely difficult. The paper is also showing the Russian president Vladimir Putin's longtime mistress used offshore accounts to purchase an apartment in Monaco and the fact that she has nearly 100 million dollars sitting in accounts. Overall there many of Putin's entourage is believed to have largely benefited from their connections to him But also despite the evidence from the Pandora Papers Russian authorities say that there's no evidence of wrongdoing amid Putin's posse. Also a number of people have found it odd that Putin himself has not mentioned it all in the papers, despite what many believe is open and blatant financial corruption on his part. We've also got places like India and Pakistan saying that they'll look into some of the claims made by the papers. As far as what these papers have to say about the US, well it actually found that some states are central to the world's system of tax havens. The biggest target here being South Dakota, which is sitting on $367 billion in obscured assets,

which is an absolutely massive number, meaning that it rivals some of the world's most famous tax havens like Singapore and Switzerland. Regarding this, we saw the Biden administration being criticized for bowing in the past to make America's and the world's financial systems more transparent, only for it to now be revealed that the US is one of the largest tax havens.

Once again, with the Pandora Papers, you should understand there is a lot more that is very likely going to come. I mean, these are fairly new and we're talking about nearly three terabytes of information but that is where this story and actually today's show ends. And of course, whether it be this story or really anything else that stood out to you today,

I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below. Also remember, snag what you want while you can over at beautifulbastard.com. That drop just went live, it's going away soon. But 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.