The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 11.9 Youtube is Failing YOU, Election Misinformation Thriving, Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine, & More

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Sign up to Morning Brew today for FREE: https://cen.yt/morningbrewphil Follow me off of Youtube: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco -- WATCH Full “A Convo With” Podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/ACW  LISTEN On The Podcast Platform Of Your Choice: http://LinksHole.com WATCH the ACW Clips channel!: https://youtube.com/ACWClips -- 00:00 - Cold Open & Election Misinformation Thriving on Youtube 07:51 - Sponsor 08:42 - Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Details 13:03 - Philip DeFranco's Final Thoughts, Warnings, & Georgia Senators' Call For Resignation Denied -- ✩ SUPPORT THE SHOW ✩ ✭ BUY our GEAR, Support the Show!: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✭ Lemme Touch Your Hair: http://BeautifulBastard.com ✭ Paid Subscription: http://DeFrancoElite.com  ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩  Misinformation on Election Results Spread on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: https://www.tubefilter.com/2020/11/06/youtube-election-misinformation-oann-steve-bannon/ https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21550180/youtube-oann-video-election-trump-misinformation-voting-final-results-facebook-twitter Pfizer Shares Promising Vaccine Update: https://roguerocket.com/2020/11/09/pfizer-90/ ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Two Georgia Runoffs Will Decide the Fate of the Senate:  https://roguerocket.com/2020/11/09/georgia-runoffs-senate/ Trump Will Lose Special Twitter Protections on January 20:  https://roguerocket.com/2020/11/09/trump-twitter-protections/ How the World is Reacting to the Biden-Harris U.S. Election Victory: https://roguerocket.com/2020/11/09/biden-wins-reactions/ ——————————     Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxx Enright Produced by: Amanda Morones Art Director: Brian Borst  Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Cory Ray, Neena Pesqueda, Brian Espinoza Production Team: Zack Taylor, Luke Manning  ———————————— #DeFranco #Pfizer #2020Election Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The media said what? So that's Kenneth Copeland. And if you're not familiar, he's a televangelist who, in my opinion, every time I see this guy, I just, I imagine in the next election cycle, he's going to run for office. And if he got through, the first thing he would do would be to try to propose legislation to legalize the purge. It's not just me, right? He's got purgy vibes. But in addition to that clip being uncomfortable and creepy, it also touches on a note that is more broad and less creepy. And that was that there were a number of people that were very unhappy with the results that we saw over the weekend. We can now project the winner of the presidential race.

The BBC projects that he's crossed the threshold of 270 electoral college votes needed with a win in the state of Pennsylvania. Putting him over the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the 46th president of the United States. With a number of people also refusing to believe that announcement, some public figures saying things like the news organizations don't decide who's the president.

Though it's been interesting to see, especially with the public figures, who didn't have a problem back in 2016 when the network said that Donald Trump was the projected winner. And you know, like I said, in the Saturday live stream and the days after the election, the days, weeks, and months leading up to the election,

prepare yourself for a swarm of misinformation. Both for things that we expected like in Pennsylvania with Republican legislators refusing election officials who asked to be able to count early mail-in votes early, which is why if you were unaware of that fact, it looked like maybe Donald Trump was gonna win the state and then all of a sudden, boom, mail-in ballots from Democrats hit,

as well as new and unexpected baseless claims. And I mean, genuinely so much that I can't hit every single one because it feels like there's a new conspiracy theory every second. Though I will say one of my favorites is always when someone posts something, not realizing that the thing that they're sharing

or screenshotting, it disproves what they're trying to say. For example, I've seen people posting this screenshot with captions light. Georgia has a population of 3.7 million people, but somehow has 5 million votes. What is going on in our country? Well, my guy, the votes are being counted as they should. And the graphic that you shared is for Georgia, the country.

Once again, this is just one small thing in a whole sea of desperate flailing, which of course there has been so much of, spearheaded by Donald Trump, his family and allies. They were having to see people like Georgia's Republican Lieutenant Governor, Jeff Duncan, go on TV to say. My office has been in close communication with the Secretary of State's office and the Attorney General's office

and made sure that if there's any sort of systemic examples of fraud or voter disenfranchisement across the voting base, to let us know. We've not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet, and so we'll continue to make sure that the opportunity to make sure every legal ballot is counted is there but you know at this point we've not seen any sort of credible examples. And so with all that I think where we start today is talking about tech companies, the election, and misinformation. Heading into this election there was a ton of pressure on large social media platforms to stop the spread of misinformation largely and I think rightly because of the role many of those companies had in allowing false information to spread like wildfire during the 2016 election and after. And now more recently, headed into one of the most contentious elections in American history,

they had their work cut out for them. And of course, notably, we've talked about a lot of the large platforms responding to this, putting in new policies and rules ahead of the election. But also, despite those measures, you still had a lot of people finding a lot of issues with how they were dealing with the situation. While the focus around this topic has largely been on Facebook and Twitter. I actually wanna start with YouTube because YouTube, sorry YouTube, keep signing those checks. They have actually been at the center of some of the most significant

election misinformation criticism. In the days following the election, numerous outlets have reported that it's been shockingly easy to find misleading and downright false information on the platform. And while there've been reports of a number of videos falsely claiming to be proof of voter fraud, one of the most talked about examples involves two videos posted by the far-right channel OAN.

And if you're unfamiliar with OAN, the way that I describe it, it's like if someone looked at Fox News and they're like, that's not nearly enough propaganda. You know, the first of these videos, it was uploaded on Wednesday, falsely claiming that Trump had won the election on election night, with the second being posted the day after, and once again falsely claiming that Trump had won and accused Democrats of trying to steal the election. And despite the fact that these videos are just blatantly false,

YouTube has refused to remove either of the videos, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that they didn't violate the company's guidelines, saying, "'Our community guidelines prohibit content "'misleading viewers about voting. "'For example, content aiming to mislead voters "'about the time, place, means, "'or eligibility requirements for voting,

"'or false claims that could materially discourage voting. "'The content of this video doesn't rise to that level, so it wasn't removed. But then in a, ah, God, it's just such a YouTube response. Another YouTube spokesperson said that the videos did violate their advertising rules, saying, we do not allow ads to run on content that undermines competence in elections

with demonstrably false information. The election has not been called, therefore this is in scope of our demonstrably false policy and will be demonetized on YouTube. So if we take these two responses from YouTube and we put them together, I could just hear this video being suppressed by YouTube right now. Please share this video if you can. YouTube is literally saying this is demonstrably false information that is undermining confidence in the election, in our democracy. And that is wrong. So we won't make money from it, but we will just allow it to keep being spread

on our platform. You can put your little label noting that the APs called the election for Biden underneath the video but you put that literally under every video. There's no differentiator. And that's an, of course, addition to the numerous and incredibly well-viewed videos saying things like

there's a man in Detroit wheeling a red wagon. It was carrying ballots. People saying, you wouldn't be able to trust it because some ballots they could fly off the back. And then it turns out, no, the man with the wagon was actually a cameraman for a local news outlet wheeling the station's video equipment. Even though the station quickly debunked

that rapidly spreading piece of misinformation, YouTube has failed to act. This isn't a difference of opinion, conversation or debate. This is a difference of reality conversation. And YouTube, by allowing this to spread without any significant warning, you are complicit. But with Facebook and Twitter, they of course have not been perfect.

I don't think perfect is possible in this age of misinformation. When it comes to blatantly false information, they have taken at least far firmer actions. And that includes Facebook putting on probation, if not outright shutting down groups on Facebook that were sharing misinformation about boat rigging, falsely claiming that the election is being stolen,

as well as what they've been having to do with Donald Trump himself. With, according to reports, Facebook flagging 27 of the 54 posts Trump has made since election day. And Twitter, meanwhile, has labeled 34 of the 80 tweets Trump has posted since November 3rd, right? Roughly 40%. Though, of course, with this,

there's still the conversation of, you know, what do you do to stop this spreading? Right, because while the spread of those flag posts, sometimes they're limited, that is not always the case. But ultimately that is where we are with this story. We're gonna have to keep our eyes on how social media companies handle this misinformation, which once again is important in the now

because there is a fire hose of misinformation. But also this is a key and troubling situation as we all move forward. Misinformation's not just going away. Even with Donald Trump losing the election electorally, as well as with the popular vote, it's not like poof, everything becomes better, the virus has been cured. On so many different fronts, we have massive problems

with misinformation being just one of them. And unfortunately, until we figure out a way to actually get a handle on the situation, it's only gonna get worse. And once again, I wanna reiterate this because I think there are gonna be people that push back against an argument I am not making. I'm not talking about a crackdown

on people who have different opinions. I'm not talking about a crackdown on people who are saying maybe something offensive. I'm talking about people who are spreading and effectively spreading misinformation and lies. The truth needs to still matter. We need to have at the very least a common starting point. Otherwise everything falls apart.

But yeah, that is where I'm gonna end this piece. And of course, where I pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts regarding everything we've been seeing? And then let's talk about COVID-19. We have good and bad news. Starting with the bad, we're seeing the number of cases, hospitalizations and death on the rise again.

In fact, as of November 4th in the United States, every single day, we've had over 100,000 new cases, with the worst being November 7th when we had over 129,000 new cases. Also, and I mean, this is a real concern, in addition to us going into winter, which Dr. Fauci said the numbers are going to get worse, it is gonna be interesting to see

maybe how much in-person voting and all of the celebrations that we've seen since Friday lend themselves to this spread. Right, so that is the bad, but we also got some major and hopeful news this morning regarding Pfizer. Because both they and a German biotechnology firm called BioNTech, they're now saying

that their joint coronavirus vaccine is more than 90% effective. And notably, this is the strongest signal yet that a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine is on the horizon. As far as what Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks, right? A lot of people use him as the gauge. He called this news extraordinary.

Now, as far as some of the specifics of this trial, it involves over 43,000 people. And of those people, half were given two doses of the vaccine trial and half were given a placebo. And the thing to keep in mind here is that with this being a vaccine, the goal here is to prevent people from catching COVID-19, not to treat people who are already infected.

And on that note, so far, 94 people in the study have caught COVID-19, which means that if this is really 90% effective, then it appears that at least so far, 94 people in the study have caught COVID-19, which means that if this is really 90% effective, then it appears that at least 85 of those 94 people must have come from the placebo group. Now, while this looks incredibly promising, a thing to note is that this data still needs to be peer reviewed by other experts in the field.

And there are also crucial questions that need to be answered. Things like, how does this vaccine work among high risk populations? Were those 94 cases of COVID-19 mostly mild? Were they severe? Was it mixed? How long does this vaccine offer protection?

Also need to note, the trial itself is not over with both companies saying they'll continue collecting data until 164 people in the trial catch COVID-19. Right, so you're talking 70 more people that could take a few weeks and notably, it could also mean that this 90% effective rate could change. Also, some of the big news here is you have Pfizer and BioNTech planning to submit

an emergency authorization application to the Food and Drug Administration after the third week of this month. But even as they are officially waiting, they're also ramping up production of the vaccine with the goal being to create 50 million doses by the end of the year. With that being enough for 25 million people

since it comes in two doses. And they have a goal to create 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021. So some hopeful news on the day that the United States has officially surpassed 10 million cases. Now, in addition to medical experts being optimistic about this, we saw president elect Joe Biden congratulating quote, the brilliant men and women who helped produce

this breakthrough and to give us such cause for hope. Though Biden also stressing a thing that we've seen so many health experts stressing as well, the need to continue wearing masks. Also of note, this Pfizer news actually came around the same time that Biden announced his 13 member coronavirus task force this morning which will be led by three co-chairs,

former surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, former food and drug commissioner, David Kessler and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith from Yale University. Also a thing with this story that is not the most important but I've seen a lot of fighting and the information has been kind of skewed or messy depending on the source. Going back to Pfizer this morning,

we saw president Trump celebrating the bump in the stock market that this news brought. The Vice President Mike Pence also say, "'Thanks to the public-private partnership "'forged by President Trump, "'Pfizer announced its coronavirus vaccine trial "'is effective, preventing infection "'in 90% of its volunteers.'"

However, regarding that actually unlike other vaccine developers that are also in late stage trials, Pfizer never accepted any of the money from the government for vaccine research or development. Right, it never actually participated in any form of research related to Operation Warp Speed, which is the Trump administration's public-private partnership aimed at developing

a coronavirus vaccine. With Katherine Janssen, the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, noting that herself in an interview with the New York Times. In fact, saying that the very reason Pfizer chose not to engage in Warp Speed was to remain independent and devoid of political influence. With Janssen saying, we have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves, no politics.

Though, I do want to note here, because not everything is black and white. Back in July, the U.S. government did reach a deal to buy 100 million doses from Pfizer for nearly $2 billion. That contract also including an option for the government to buy 500 million more doses. So, I do want to be clear here. On the supplier side, yes, Pfizer is involved with Warp Speed. However, that is still different from trying to claim that Warp Speed is the reason why Pfizer

is a seemingly effective vaccine. But with all of that said, here is to hoping that we are actually looking at an effective vaccine. As experts have noted, the vaccine is not the end-all, be-all, there's a concern over who's going to feel comfortable taking it initially, over what period of time will others join in, are people still going to wear masks?

But here's to hoping that there is still more good news to come. And then, you know, the last thing that I wanna talk about today, it's more of just leaving you on this note, is be prepared for just the absolute insanity these coming weeks have in store for us. You know, on election day, I said it felt very odd.

It felt like we were in the eye of a hurricane with full knowledge that the wall of that hurricane was coming. And understand, it's not just gonna be misinformation. We're talking about really concerning actions, chaotic moves. You know, even as I was finishing up today's show, you have Georgia's two Republican senators calling

for the Republican secretary of state to step down. This because they say they believe without evidence that he failed to deliver honest and transparent elections. And really, I mean, just look at what they're saying because they didn't deliver it for Trump, right? And these two Republican senators are the same senators who are both now officially headed into runoff elections because they failed to pull in enough of the votes.

So understand you should take that with a grain of salt. Also, as I was finishing up today's show, the Secretary of State hit back saying, "'Let me start by saying that this is not going to happen. "'The voters of Georgia hired me "'and the voters will be the one to fire me.'" And noting, "'I know emotions are running high. "'Politics are involved in everything right now.

"'If I was Senator Perdue, "'I'd be irritated I was in a runoff. "'And both senators and I are all unhappy "'with the potential outcome for our president. "'But I am the duly elected Secretary of State. "'One of my duties involves helping to run elections "'for all Georgia voters. "'I have taken the oath and I will execute that duty

"'and follow Georgia law." Then going on to hit fact after fact, including the no excuse absentee law was adopted by a Republican legislature supported by speaker David Ralston and signed into law by then governor Sonny Perdue. Noting the process of reporting results has been orderly and followed the law.

Where there have been specific allegations of illegal voting by offices, dispatched investigators. And as far as the lack of transparency, we were literally putting releases of results up at a minimum hourly. You have stuff like that. And then you have things like today, Donald Trump fired his defense secretary, Mark Esper.

And today we see him announcing that on Twitter with reports saying there's now a worry that the president will next fire FBI director, Christopher Wray and CIA director, Gina Haspel. And once again, all of this is happening in a situation that I know that I've seen people comparing it to Bush versus Gore regarding the issues with Florida in 2000.

No, that was a situation involving one state, a difference of 537 votes. What we are talking about is a situation where the American people have spoken, not only with a massive popular vote lead for Biden, even with the electoral college. Right now, Biden's known lead in Georgia, 10,621 votes. Arizona, 17,131 votes.

Wisconsin, 20,539 votes. Nevada, 36,186 votes. Pennsylvania, 45,063 votes. Michigan, 147,896 votes. And it's also why we've seen so many of the legal cases just thrown out. And I also warn you to be wary of certain individuals who say, we need to count all the legal votes. Of course we have to count all the legal case is just thrown out. And I also warn you to be wary of certain individuals who say, we need to count all the legal votes.

Of course we have to count all the legal votes. That's what's happening. And they say, be wary because a number of the people saying, yes, we need to count the legal votes are also the same people that want certain states to go to Trump because it looked like he was in the lead before mail-in votes were counted. A number of these people are trying to poison the well

to make you think that there's this huge batch of illegal votes. When you know what to look for, their sneaky bullshit is incredibly transparent. But yeah, all that said, I guess the main thing here is just prepare yourself for a very bumpy ride. And that is where I'm going to end today's show. As always, thank you for being a part

of my daily dives into the news. Also, if you're new here, you wanna join the family, hit that subscribe button, maybe even text me at 813-213-4423. Get updates, exclusives. I try to talk to people whenever I can one-on-one. Yeah, 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.