The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 12.6 The Truth About Jenna Ortega & this Wednesday Backlash, AI Made This Thumbnail, Georgia Runoff, &

Starting point is 00:00:00 Jenna Ortega is coming under fire, the great US news ban is coming, Georgia is deciding, AI is taking over everything, all that and so much more we're going to be talking about on today's show. So buckle up, hit that like button and let's just jump into it, starting with Jenna Ortega. She's been getting a lot of love, a lot of praise, but she's also now found herself in a controversy and on the receiving end of some growing backlash. So Ortega, of course, stars in Netflix's Wednesday. It's become an incredibly popular show on Netflix, even reportedly beating out Stranger Things to have the biggest English language debut on the platform. One scene in the series in particular going just wild viral. We have Wednesday dancing to the song Goo Goo Muck, with her also reportedly having made the choreography, but also during a recent interview with NME, she revealed, It's crazy because it was my first day with COVID, so it was awful to film. I had the body aches, I felt like I'd been hit by a car, and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus.

Starting point is 00:00:52 And saying they were giving me medicine between takes because they were waiting on the positive results. But they're even noting that she wanted to redo it because she thought she could do it better afterwards, but there just wasn't enough time. And while MGM, which produced the show, told NME that there were strict COVID protocols on set and that Jenna was removed after her first positive test, the internet saw that quote and basically was like, wait, what? She was filming on set while she had COVID symptoms while she was actively sick? With comments coming in like, can we all agree that this is not some persevering through hardship moment? It's a why the fuck didn't she get sent home? She could get horrendously sick or infect others kind of moment? As well as she should have been isolated, not made to keep working while feeling ill. Forcing Jenna Ortega to keep working

Starting point is 00:01:26 and spreading COVID around the set is so negligent of the producers and studio. And for those angry here, there was a notable split. You had some just blaming the higher-ups, with comments like, Jenna as the employee is not responsible, Netflix, the producers, and Burton would be. People noting that she even informed them on time.

Starting point is 00:01:39 But also you had others mad at Jenna, saying she was telling this story to make herself sound brave and tough when it really just made her seem stupid and irresponsible. Saying that we shouldn't be impressed by her, we should be horrified. Saying her co-workers were put in an unfair position and, I'm tired of us romanticizing people working through sickness. Not inspiring, it's upsetting and unnecessary and it shouldn't have to be this way. But clearly, there are a lot of different thoughts and a lot of different feelings with this story and so I'd love to know yours. What's your take

Starting point is 00:02:00 on this story and why? And then, no more Facebook news. Well, it sounds like it could be a good thing because your Aunt Sharon's going to lose her primary news source, Alpha Eagle for Freedom 69, talking about Adrenochrome. It's actually far more complicated than that because right now Congress is looking to pass a proposal called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act or JCPA, which would allow news outlets to collectively bargain with tech giants like Meta or Google, which would give them greater leverage in negotiating for a larger share of ad revenue in exchange for their content. And a key thing here is that this bill

Starting point is 00:02:26 started as a standalone legislation, but reportedly lawmakers are considering adding it to a must-pass annual defense bill in an effort to help the news industry. Now, obviously, Meta is not a fan of the JCPA in general, let alone any plan to accelerate its passing. So we saw a spokesperson tweeting out a scathing statement from the company yesterday saying,

Starting point is 00:02:42 if Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions. Put simply, the government creating a cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American businesses. Or, to put it all simply, Meta is threatening to remove news from their platforms if the bill passes.

Starting point is 00:03:09 And understand, they have acted on threats like this before. In Australia, the government passed similar legislation last year despite Facebook's objections, with Facebook then pulling down any news from their platform for several days, resulting in a news blackout that the government condemned. But since then, the Australian government reported that more than 30 commercial agreements between local news outlets and Meta or Google have been struck. As you have a situation where there are two sides. On one side, you have supporters of the JCPA, like the News Media Alliance, a trade body representing the newspaper industry. And they say that the bill will level the playing field and ensure fair compensation for the work of small and local publishers. Also saying of Meta's threat, that it's undemocratic and unbecoming. And as the tech platforms compensate

Starting point is 00:03:42 news publishers around the world, it demonstrates there is a demand in economic value for news. Others saying the bill would boost the shrinking profits of local news outlets. But then there's the other side with the tech giants. And they claim that news outlets already significantly benefit from the way things are, and claiming the proposal would unfairly tip the scales against the tech companies. But also, it's not just the tech companies against the JCPA, with more than two dozen organizations signing an open letter yesterday opposing the JCPA's inclusion in the must-pass annual defense bill. And arguing that the bill would actually unfairly benefit larger news conglomerates rather than the small local outlets that supporters are claiming. But, as far as what's going to happen, the bill reportedly has bipartisan support, so we're going to have to keep an eye on it.

Starting point is 00:04:15 And in the meantime, I want to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts here? And then, is this stealing? Is this ripping people off? That is the question at hand with this latest social media trend and controversy. So for the last little bit, you might have seen these photos being posted by your friends, your family, even big names like Chance the Rapper, where they have like images of themselves that were then turned into some genre or time period of artwork. And most of those images in question are coming from Lenza AI. It's an app that has a section that uses Stable Diffusion's open source

Starting point is 00:04:38 image generator. For eight dollars you send it around a dozen selfies and it sends you back very stylized images. It's part of Prisma Labs Which is promoted the app by advertising what it looks like when you put celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel and Casey Neistat through it while some See it as cool harmless fun others see it as theft and according to tech crunch There are concerns that it's stealing from artists putting out a piece saying stable diffusion the AI image generator The powers Lenzo was originally trained on 2.3 billion captioned images a massive cross-section of the visual internet and saying swept up in all of that is all kinds of stuff, including watermarked images, copyrighted works, and a huge swath of pictures from Pinterest,

Starting point is 00:05:10 and saying individual artists didn't opt in to appearing in the training dataset, nor can they opt out, which is why you may have seen tons of people criticizing Lenza and other AI art apps, with people tweeting things like, admittedly, I got curious and tried it out and immediately regretted doing so.

Starting point is 00:05:22 Looking at the results made me feel really sad because I could see that the images were born from thousands and thousands of hours of practice of real artists. And these AI are actively hurting real artists who have actually worked to be as good as they are. Real art shouldn't be cheap or fast because art is born from passion and dedication. And Lenza isn't it. These AI platforms are trained on literally billions of hours of labor that artists did not consent to be included. But also others that had issue with it saying, you know, it's the actual theft of the art. Some even posting photos of these Lenza images

Starting point is 00:05:47 where warped and mangled versions of an artist's signature can apparently be seen. But on the other side you have people saying this is kind of just a different version of something that already happened, saying there are very few actually original things, you have something that's inspired by, that's inspired by, that's inspired by, that's inspired by another thing. Arguing that it's part of the evolution of art, saying, artists will always art and art mediums constantly change slash are updated. Arguing that it's part of the evolution of art, saying, Artists will always art, and art mediums constantly change, slash, or update it.

Starting point is 00:06:07 Isn't that kind of cool? So I'm going on to say this is kind of the great equalizer. Arguing most people can't pay an artist that lends us just barely $10. Claiming the people that do this likely aren't in the market to hire an artist for anything in the first place.

Starting point is 00:06:18 I will personally say there, I think that's kind of one of the weaker arguments. Given enough time, if unchecked, this will drive the price down of pretty much most artwork. So I'm also kind of landing in between understanding the concerns of artists, but not thinking that every use of it is applicable or kind of connected. And so with all that said, I do want to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts here? I'm personally

Starting point is 00:06:35 trying to consider all things. I didn't even know this was a thing until after I had already paid for the app with spitting out a number of images, including these. Side note, thank you to the AI for making my jaw that strong. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of want to sit down and think about it. But in the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Where are you thinking? Why?

Starting point is 00:06:51 Any and all thoughts. And then, please be so careful if you're vacationing to Bali anytime soon. And this because Indonesia just unanimously passed a religiously inspired criminal code that among many things bans sex outside of marriage. And yes, this applies to foreigners living there as well as tourists. It also bans cohabitation before marriage and apostasy, which is especially fucked considering that despite having the largest Muslim population in the world, plenty of other Indonesians aren't Muslim and people were free to choose which religion to follow. And understand, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Starting point is 00:07:18 There are also prohibitions against expressing views counter to the national ideology or insulting the president, who is a complete fuckhead, by the way. I'm mostly just saying that on principle because they can't anymore. But for many Indonesians, this is not a complete shock. Right, lawmakers had already attempted to pass a similar set of codes a few years ago, but ultimately backed out after protests. But notably, since then, there's been an even more pronounced turn towards religious conservatism, paving the way for this to be unanimously passed. With all this, you had one lawmaker trying to frame this and justify it, saying, you know, this is about breaking away from colonialism. Saying the old code belongs to Dutch heritage and is no longer relevant.

Starting point is 00:07:49 And supporters of this change claiming the concerns about the law are overblown. Arguing, for example, that only people like parents can report their children for cohabitating or having sex before marriage. But the counter to that is that parents can report their children for cohabitating or having sex before marriage. With those outraged by this also pointing to the likely infringement towards civil rights, something that notably Indonesia worked hard to get after a revolution in 1998. And on top of that, because money moves mountains,

Starting point is 00:08:12 there are people concerned that this is going to hurt tourism. Even though the authorities claim that only certain people can report you, you've got people like the chairman of one of the largest tourism groups in the country pointing out, from our point of view as tourism industry players, this law will be very troublesome. Should we ask overseas and unmarried couples if they're married or not? Do tourist couples have to prove that they're married? And saying if these laws are really implemented later, tourists might be subjected to jail and this will harm tourism. So at least in the meantime, rethink where you're going. At least for now, because right now this isn't the end of the road,

Starting point is 00:08:38 right? Because there will likely be challenges to the new criminal code at the constitutional level. And it's kind of unclear how that's actually going to go as Indonesia has a mixed bag of upholding secular ideals while also flirting with imposing Muslim control over the other minorities, as this law demonstrates. And then for those rainy and or snowy days, depending on where you are, nobody likes your shoes getting soaked, making your feet freeze.

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Starting point is 00:09:37 Use code DeFranco to get your style and size before they sell out. And then the world is changing, but especially for office space. Because before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. But now, after the rise of work from home and businesses just realizing that having an office was incredibly expensive, the number is around 47%. That is a world-changing decrease. And for many cities, that sudden change has shifted their urban environments. Foot traffic in downtown areas is down, with one writer at Business Insider making the comparison that, not unlike how de-industrialization led to abandoned factories and warehouses, the pandemic has led downtowns into a new period of transition. So one of the potential solutions is to turn all

Starting point is 00:10:12 those empty spaces into housing. Though, what kind of housing remains to be seen? For example, you have some, let's call him an innovator, like Elon Musk, reportedly turning some of the empty Twitter offices into bedrooms. Though that may be more closely tied to an employer trying to get over 100 hours of work a week out of an employee. It's also kind of fantastically ridiculous. When Elon was taking over the company, he was like, hey, if you're working at home, you're coming in. With, I guess, for some of the employees being like, and now work is your home. But separate from the idea of just sleeping where you work, there are serious calls to convert all of these big, empty skyscrapers and office buildings into apartments and condos. And in

Starting point is 00:10:42 many cities, that could be a huge win because it's not like the housing crunch in urban areas suddenly disappeared. And the key thing is, like, we're not talking about a few apartments. In New York City, about 50% of workers are back in their offices. And in San Francisco, they have an office vacancy rate of between 34% and 40%. And we're seeing similar numbers in growing cities like Dallas and Austin. And the reality is that the cost of converting these units into homes is going to be a major hurdle, with the head of research at Coldwell Banker pointing out that since 2016, there hasn't been a major shift in how many conversions have taken place. But it feels like if there is a time this could change, it would be now. Because the cost of returning to offices is a non-starter for many businesses and a

Starting point is 00:11:15 negative starter for many employees. And it's happening at the same time where their concerns about large business districts just slowly die. So it really feels like the perfect solution is just sitting right there. It's largely just a matter of showing developers that it's actually worth it. And then, today is slash was the final day you could vote in the Senate runoff election in Georgia. And what better way to talk about it than to introduce it with an unnecessarily involved graphic package that I call The Last Senator. In June, Congress passed the first bipartisan legislation to combat gun violence in 30 years. Hello, Georgia! passed the first bipartisan legislation to combat gun violence in 30 years. Hello, Georgia!

Starting point is 00:11:47 Well, I tell you what, can you not tell this man loves the United States of America? I am with many police officers, and at the same time... Mr. Walker? Yeah, early voting is underway in the state of Georgia. That's where we are now. It's a highly contested Senate runoff. Decision 2022 officially begins its overtime period today, as several counties across the state opened up polling locations. Who's a vampire killer from that TV to get rid of this real life vampire, and they had it.

Starting point is 00:12:16 So if this actor comes to their home, he got all the right stuff. That graphic package cost $17,000. I'm kidding, no. But yeah, essentially public involvement regarding the midterms ends today, with Georgia voters deciding if they want their senator to be incumbent Raphael Warnock or serial liar, abuser, absent father, and clear victim of CTE, Herschel Walker. And it appears that people in this state understand how big of a deal this is because Georgia is breaking records, specifically absolutely smashing early voting records in the state. In fact, according to the Georgia Secretary of State office, nearly 1.9 million voters cast ballots ahead of election day.

Starting point is 00:12:48 And key thing here, that even includes 76,000 people who did not vote in the general election. Now, notably, Georgia doesn't track party affiliation for early voters, so in the lead up we don't officially know which candidate's benefiting more. But, experts say that you can get a pretty solid idea by looking at demographic data. Right, black voters who very strongly favored Warnock in exit polls in the midterms made up nearly one out of every three ballots cast already. Women who also preferred Warnock on November 8th composed more than half of the early votes. And Gen Z voters who skew liberal have also come in

Starting point is 00:13:14 hot so far. In fact, you had Democratic analysts estimating that Warnock was actually heading into today with a lead of 8 percentage points. And if it turns out that is actually the case, Republicans are going to need a crazy turnout today, also hoping that Democrats don't turn out to get in their vote. But if that happens, we'll have to wait to see.

Starting point is 00:13:28 Because one of the biggest factors that could actually decide a win for Walker specifically is will Republicans who just voted down ballot still turn out when it's just for him? Because the general election was very high stakes for Georgia for a number of contests. Governor, attorney general, secretary of state, all on the ballot in addition to all the House races.

Starting point is 00:13:43 But also in addition to that, what's gonna be very interesting to see is what issues drove voters in this election. Right, exit polls from the generals showed that the economy was a top issue. Also, abortion was a massive mobilizer following the Supreme Court ruling. And we'll see if that continues into this runoff. Also, as far as the turnout we're seeing today, as of recording this morning, precincts across the state have actually reported that there haven't been long lines or wait times. With some experts speculating that rain and bad weather is going to drive down the turnout,

Starting point is 00:14:05 which, yes, is a thing, and actually, if anything, that should make you feel like your vote matters even more, so get out there. And as far as getting information tonight, getting results, polls will be closing 7 p.m. Eastern, and the Georgia Secretary of State's office said that they'll start posting unofficial outcomes shortly after that. But the speed of the results, depending, of course, on how quickly counties share their tallies with state officials. And hopefully we can get some idea fairly early in the night of what things are looking like. I think I speak for a decent chunk of people when I say

Starting point is 00:14:26 I'm just, I'm ready for the midterms to be over. Like, I'm not saying that what's to come isn't going to be a clown show, but let's just, let's get to the next chapter. Though there are also things that could make this drag out, not only regarding the reporting of the votes, but also, let's say Walker loses. This morning, he refused to say whether or not he would concede the election if he loses, which kind of makes sense. He was just chumming it up with Carrie Lake. But hey, good luck, Georgia. You won't be just deciding one of your senators. You will be deciding how much power Joe Manchin and or Kyrsten Sinema have in the Senate. But that is where that story and today's show ends. As always, thank you for watching, liking, and being a part of these daily dives in the news. But as always,

Starting point is 00:14:58 my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 12.6 The Truth About Jenna Ortega & this Wednesday Backlash, AI Made This Thumbnail, Georgia Runoff, &

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