The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 3.28 HE'S MAKING TOO MANY BABIES! Taylor Swift, PewDiePie, Dwayne Johnson, Chipotle, & Today's News

Starting point is 00:00:00 This man just can't keep it in his pants. Dwayne Johnson just got rocked. Elon's desperate flailing. The crisis at the border is about to get worse. New PewDiePie model. We're gonna talk about all that and so much more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show, so buckle up, make sure you're subscribed,

Starting point is 00:00:13 and let's just jump into it. Starting with, this man right here makes Nick Cannon look like an amateur, because this man is Jonathan Jacob Meyer, and he reportedly has over 500 children. And the reason we're talking about him today is he is currently facing a lawsuit aimed at forcing him to stop donating sperm. With a lawsuit saying that Meyer's prolific and obsessive donation habit heightens the risk of accidental incest

Starting point is 00:00:32 for the children. And the thing is, this idea in general, it was a known concern. In fact, right now, Dutch guidelines limit donors to fathering 25 children in order to minimize the risk of incest and inbreeding. But Meyer apparently said to hell with that, because he reportedly donated at least 13 clinics in the Netherlands as well as use websites and social media to reach out to women looking for donors. In fact, back in 2017, after the Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology had learned that Meyer had already fathered more than 100 children, he was blacklisted from all clinics in the Netherlands. But then he reportedly just continued his donations in Ukraine and Denmark as well as internationally. And understand the 500,

Starting point is 00:01:03 550 number that's getting thrown around, that doesn't factor in children he may have fathered using those international services or anonymous donations. With one professional who tracked Myers' movements telling the Times in 2021 that she had found mothers of his children in Australia, Italy, Serbia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Romania, Sweden, Mexico, and the US.

Starting point is 00:01:19 With many of the mothers of Myers' children displeased with learning how many kids he has. With one mother from the Netherlands partnering with DonorKind, a Dutch organization for children conceivedpleased with learning how many kids he has. With one mother from the Netherlands partnering with Donorkind, a Dutch organization for children conceived via sperm donor, bringing this lawsuit against him. With a mother claiming that Myers told her that he didn't have more than 25 donor children,

Starting point is 00:01:32 so she was very surprised to learn the truth, saying, had I known this, I would have never chosen him. And adding, when I think about the consequences this could have for my child, I get a bad gut feeling and I become uncertain about his future. How many more children will be added? So you have Donorkind and this mother

Starting point is 00:01:43 looking for the court to order Myers to stop donating and for any clinic that has his sperm to destroy it. And then in entertainment news, Dwayne Johnson owes $30 million to Disney, Netflix, and a bunch of other major studios. Though, no, not that Dwayne Johnson. I'm not talking about The Rock. Rather, it's this completely other guy that also just happens to be named Dwayne Johnson. Because according to this new report from The Hollywood Reporter, this random guy just agreed to resolve a piracy lawsuit with those studios. Right, because this Dwayne Johnson, who's never asked you if you can smell what he's cooking,

Starting point is 00:02:08 was sued by Universal, Disney, and Netflix back in December of 2021 for copyright infringement. And other studios like Warner Bros and Paramount later joining onto the case. And that's because Johnson was accused of operating two services that sold subscriptions to copyrighted movies and shows. With the extent of the piracy here reportedly being massive.

Starting point is 00:02:21 With those services hosting things like Harry Potter films in the office. And on top of that, there was reportedly a live feed channel that allowed people to access HBO, Cinemax, and more. And from just one of those services, Johnson allegedly made $3 million in annual revenue. But ultimately, he's now agreed to pay $30 million over the matter, and he's also barred from continuing to operate any service with pirated content. So this is obviously a win for Hollywood, but I don't know how long-term of a win. Because for them, I imagine this is like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

Starting point is 00:02:47 With Bloomberg reporting that piracy costs the entertainment industry $71 billion a year globally. And then, why are people saying PewDiePie just figured out a real-life infinite money glitch? Well, that's because over the last few days, his old Twitch channel, which has sat dormant for years, has seemingly come back to life. Except this isn't PewDiePie making a big ol' return to Twitch streaming, and it's not like he got hacked. Instead, what's actually happening is his catalog of nearly 5,000 YouTube videos is just playing 24-7 back-to-back-to-back, with people then dubbing it an infinite money glitch because of the sheer amount of content it can throw out

Starting point is 00:03:12 to the public simply by recycling old videos. Right, so now he's on channel, he's getting ad revenue, possibly new subscriptions, it introduces him to new audiences. And this may be just a small part of what ends up being a much larger movement, because this appears to be a partnership with a licensing company called Copilot Media, with them calling this stream initiative PewDiePie Infinite. And I think if this is even remotely a success, we're going to see a lot of other creators do it. Because in part, there are a lot of creators that don't want to just like do other shit. For example, I have a show over on Snapchat, except I literally have nothing to do with it. That's just a company called Jelly Smack that repurposes my content.

Starting point is 00:03:41 We had a completely different audience. We bring in a bunch of different revenue. When it comes to PewDiePie or other creators, I can understand the appeal of like an always on channel. I mean, how many of us have or have had a show in the past that we just like we put on in the background? Like I know for some people it's like Friends or The Office, others it's Family Guy or The Simpsons. Why not this where it's one of your favorite creators and at the same time there's a chat with it. So you can watch it passively or it could be you and a bunch of fans like actually interacting. But ultimately we're gonna have to wait to see how people in the market react to this.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Is this successful? I hopped in in the middle of today's show and there were 1,500 concurrent viewers, which is not nothing, but it's also not crazy numbers. But with this, I'd love to know your thoughts. And then Ticketmaster is officially headed to court. And this over that complete shitshow fans dealt with trying to get tickets to Taylor Swift's ERAs tour. Dealing with hours of technical difficulties, glitches, getting booted, pretty much everything other than a street fight happened. Though if it did, that wouldn't surprise me, but

Starting point is 00:04:27 all in an effort to get tickets, and most walked away empty-handed. Which is why we saw fans filing a lawsuit against Ticketmaster, and that suit actually had its first hearing in Los Angeles yesterday. On a website titled Takedown Ticketmaster, the firm representing the Swifties claims, fans' experiences with Ticketmaster indicated a potential pattern of fraudulent behavior and antitrust violations by the company. And in this case, there were over 300 plaintiffs, with some flying from all over the country to be present at the hearing. With 30 plaintiffs, most of whom actually participated virtually, speaking on Monday about the kind of lawsuit they're seeking.

Starting point is 00:04:52 With lawyer Jennifer Ann Kinder specifically planning to not see class action status because she feels that individual trials will be more effective for the plaintiffs. And with these, we're seeing fans seeking at least $2,500 each in damages. Though, as the LA Times noted, their real goal is to break up Live Nation's monopoly. With one Swifty telling CNN, It has nothing to do with the money. It has everything to do with Ticketmaster is the only venue in town. It's the only place to get tickets. And Kinder telling the LA Times that she wants forensic data on what went down the day ERA's tour tickets went on sale. How bots got in, why the site couldn't accommodate all the users,

Starting point is 00:05:19 and explaining, I think that's the single best source of information we're going to ever have about the power and control they have, and that the only remedy is complete breakup. Also with this hearing, there was a rally of at least a dozen Swifties outside of the courthouse holding signs with song references vowing to take Ticketmaster down. And for Ticketmaster, like these aren't even the only sets of fans

Starting point is 00:05:34 that are suing them. Or because you have Drake fans also filing a price gouging lawsuit against them as well now. And then digital security is a must and the majority of account hacking happens via credential stuffing. Or I suppose you've used your usual email address

Starting point is 00:05:44 and password on a website that wasn't maintained, it got compromised. Your username and password could end up on the deep web or hacker forums. So how can you protect yourself? Well, that's where our fantastic partner and sponsor of today's show, NordVPN, or more directly, nordvpn.com slash philly d, comes in. When hackers get your information, they can take over your username and password to get into other websites like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and more. So if you've used the same password for all or some of the other websites, they might succeed and get into your account. But NordVPN can alert you if this happens when you turn on dark web monitor. And also,

Starting point is 00:06:10 be sure to use a password manager like NordPass to generate strong, unique passwords and always have them at your hand without actually having to remember them. So get protected. Go to nordvpn.com slash phillyd to get a two-year plan plus four additional months for free. It's a good deal. You don't want to pass it up. It's nordvpn.com slash phillyd. It's all risk-free with the Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. In business news, Twitter is becoming unrecognizable. I made a joke yesterday about how weird its algorithm is, that whole For You page. It's the default section of the platform now. And for me, it promotes just completely insane videos of people getting punched in the back of the head from accounts I don't follow or would have no interest in, as well as just

Starting point is 00:06:43 the most incendiary tweets that seemingly are trying to like bait me into a reaction. And now with Elon Musk's newest announcement, it's probably just going to get worse. He just announced that starting on April 15th, only verified accounts are going to come up on people's For You page. And if you don't pay Elon Musk a monthly fee for your check mark, you can't even vote in Twitter polls. With Musk trying to justify his decision today saying, this is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle. Yes, definitely that, and not related to all the humans who helped him lose that Twitter poll he put out back in December, where he was like, should I step down? And people

Starting point is 00:07:14 were like, yes, motherfucker. You know, with this, it seems to have moved even more people into thinking that Elon Musk's moves here are desperate cash grabs, with previous reports hitting on how underwhelming the revenue's been for Twitter blue up until this point others saying that musk's decision also completely ignores the free options that would stop bots that some users have suggested things like requiring id for accounts although i don't think that would be a hugely popular option either unless you're like a devout musk follower nothing up until this point makes you go like yeah i trust him with my government id and there's i say all this only being impacted by really one thing right like i see verified accounts are losing their status on april 1, oh no, poor me.

Starting point is 00:07:46 For me as a person, don't care. Like I wasn't going, hey, look who's verified on Twitter. That said, I do think it's gonna cause so much fucking confusion for so many people for so many different reasons. And as far as Twitter Blue, that doesn't affect me because I've been subscribed to Twitter Blue before Spaceman bought the site.

Starting point is 00:07:58 But for others, I mean, in addition to the people getting confused about who's actually who with everyone being verified and there being a lot of name dupes, there are now likely a ton of creators going, wait, so I'm going to lose my audience if I'm not paying Elon Musk $7? But with that, there's one last piece of the puzzle that makes it all kind of look worse. And that's because according to an alleged leak, there's a list of 35 people that Twitter doesn't enforce these restrictions on. Or because normally the algorithm somewhat limits how far a tweet can reach, even if you're paying $7 a month. But allegedly for

Starting point is 00:08:22 these 35, their stuff's boosted and way more likely to show up in your feed, as well as not get limited. Though with this, only 14 of the names were revealed, but they include Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro, and a popular MAGA account named CatTurd2, an account that's actually so popular that even Trump cited a poll that they ran on Twitter once. You'll see some numbers that are incredible.

Starting point is 00:08:38 You'll see some numbers that are, we just had one today, 69 for Trump, and I think 18 or 19 for the sanctum audiens. But understand, not just one side was represented. You had people like Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, President Joe Biden, celebrities like Mr. Beast and LeBron James. Though here, based on other reports, it seems that Elon's tweet get the most boosting. But ultimately, we're at a place where we're going to have to wait to see what actually happens from these changes, right? Does Elon Musk, making the base version of Twitter kind of just fucking suck, inspire enough people to sign up to Twitter Blue where there's a big enough revenue change? Maybe. Who knows? I mean, I personally think it's going

Starting point is 00:09:13 to fail. Twitter used to be the app I used the most. I barely fucking post on that thing. Now it's pushed me really more towards like TikTok, right? And that's just because it's part of my job. But as far as like a consumer experience, it genuinely feels like he's actively tried to ruin the website. And then some former Chipotle workers are getting over a quarter of a million dollars. With the company now reaching a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board

Starting point is 00:09:31 over a dispute about unionization. So a single location in Maine had voted to unionize over pay and staffing issues. But Chipotle claims that the whole union thing had nothing to do with the closing and rather it was those staffing issues. But the NLRB said, hey, no, this looks like retaliation. Though we likely won't know the official truth because both sides have settled with Chipotle admitting no guilt. Instead,

Starting point is 00:09:48 being able to say, you know, it's just the litigating of all this would have been more expensive than just paying the $240,000. Which, hey, money is money. That's great for these employees. But also the other way you could look at it is for a company like Chipotle, they would rather close a store and just pay $240,000 than deal with 24 unionized employees, especially because just their mere existence increases the likelihood of people unionizing elsewhere. And then in international news, at least 39 people died last night in a protest gone horribly wrong.

Starting point is 00:10:10 So it all started just across the border from El Paso in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where you had local authorities picking up illegal migrants off the streets and throwing them in a detention center reportedly holding 68 adult males. And then when some of them learned about their impending deportation,

Starting point is 00:10:21 they reportedly set mattresses on fire in protest, according to the Mexican president. Since the mattresses were so flammable, the blaze spread quickly, and the ensuing smoke suffocated many to death, with others presumably burning, leading to a death toll of 39 so far, as well as 29 who were seriously injured. I mean, not a single migrant got out unscathed. But despite the horrific scale of this tragedy,

Starting point is 00:10:39 it still doesn't surpass the 53 migrants found dead inside a sweltering San Antonio tractor trailer last July. And even that's nothing compared to the over 890 migrants' bodies recorded by U.S. authorities in the 2022 fiscal year, with many drowning in the Rio Grande, others dying during the days-long trek across remote mountainous areas of the U.S. And even that doesn't count the dozens who were lost at sea or died last year on the Mexican side of the border.

Starting point is 00:10:58 But all of this is set to get even worse as a surge of illegal immigration is expected this spring after a pandemic-era restriction known as Title 42 lapses. The Biden administration has expelled hundreds of thousands of migrants under the law, and to prevent what's already a record border crisis from getting worse, it's proposed a new policy, a policy that would largely prohibit migrants who pass through other countries

Starting point is 00:11:15 on their way to the border from applying for asylum in the U.S., which has also led a dozen Senate Democrats to denounce the policy, calling it a revised version of Trump's policy that went into effect in 2020, but was later struck down in a federal court. I'm joining a chorus of voices,

Starting point is 00:11:26 including thousands of migrant activists in the UN Refugee Agency. That's where I'm going to leave you today. Thank you as always for being a part of my daily dive into the news. My name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 3.28 HE'S MAKING TOO MANY BABIES! Taylor Swift, PewDiePie, Dwayne Johnson, Chipotle, & Today's News

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