The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 9.16 Guess Who Gave Away ALL Their Money! Hate For Profit, Kim Kardashian, Boeing Max 8, & More

Starting point is 00:00:25 I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Hope you had a fantastic Wednesday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. Buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. And the first thing that we're gonna talk about today is the situation surrounding celebrities, the election, and misinformation on social media. So this story actually begins on Monday when we saw people like Mark Ruffalo saying on Twitter, Facebook claims they address hate, yet they continue to look the other way

Starting point is 00:00:40 as racist, violent groups and posts sow division and split America apart, only taking steps after people are killed. While they share empty talk about voting, they continue allowing blatant lies and misinformation on election to spread, undermining our democracy. That's why this Wednesday I am freezing my Instagram account

Starting point is 00:00:56 to tell Facebook to stop hate for profit. Right in this because Instagram is owned by Facebook. And from there we started seeing other celebrities join in on this boycott. People like Kim Kardashian West making a very similar comment on Twitter yesterday. Also saying in addition to Instagram, she'd be freezing her Facebook page for 24 hours.

Starting point is 00:01:09 And this continued to grow with Demi Lovato, Jennifer Lawrence, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, all joining among others. All of them using the hashtag StopHateForProfit, which according to the Stop Hate For Profit website is a campaign aimed at holding social media companies accountable for hate on their platforms. The campaign adding that social media

Starting point is 00:01:25 must prioritize people over profit and they must do it now. Notably, that campaign is made up of several civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP. And as far as why this campaign is specifically targeting Facebook and Instagram, you have it saying, "'Other social media companies have heard our message and started to step up.'"

Starting point is 00:01:41 Then going on the list, examples of how it says, "'Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube have addressed misinformation and hate speech.'" And adding, "'While these steps are not sufficient, heard our message and started to step up. Then going on the list examples of how it says Twitter, Reddit and YouTube have addressed misinformation and hate speech and adding, "'While these steps are not sufficient, "'they show a commitment toward real progress.' "'More importantly, these companies are sitting "'at the table with us and actively working

Starting point is 00:01:54 "'to take additional steps, protect the civil rights "'of their users, tackle hate and harassment "'on their platforms and safeguard our democracy.'" But wow, oh wow, this Instagram freeze campaign has been met with a ton of criticism. I mean, if you go back to that Mark Ruffalo tweet that I just showed, you can easily find comments like, wow, a whole day? That'll show them. And I'd rather see a freeze for an entire month. Don't think a day will accomplish much, if anything. And on a similar post on Facebook, you had people

Starting point is 00:02:17 saying things like, how about you make some really big statement and just delete and get off these social media platforms altogether? They're making billions of dollars. And if you think boycotting for a 24-hour period is going to make even the slightest dent, I think you're sadly mistaken. I'm in the process of deleting all my social media accounts, even though I have a business and it will hurt. Doing it anyway because there has to be a better and more responsible way to promote my business. And actually, regarding that, you know, the idea of businesses pulling out of Facebook and other social media sites,

Starting point is 00:02:42 that's also something we've seen the Stop Hate for Profit campaign taking part in. For example, back in July, the campaign persuaded more than 1,000 advertisers to pause their ad spending on the platform. Notably, that included huge names like Adidas, Reebok, Best Buy, Chipotle, Coca-Cola, Target. However, a later report showed that even between boycotters and other reduced spenders, Facebook's ad revenue in July

Starting point is 00:03:01 actually didn't suffer all that much. And those results kind of lend themselves to the argument of if something that big didn't make a dent in Facebook, what's 24 hours of no insert celebrity name? Which is also why you had people calling this latest move just performative. But also we have seen some pushback to the criticism.

Starting point is 00:03:16 With people like Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that's part of this campaign, saying that the Instagram freeze is just the beginning of a larger round of messaging. Adding that when the 24 hour freeze is over, celebrities will begin posting educational messages, which will promote democracy and explain

Starting point is 00:03:31 how social media companies spread disinformation, broadcast hate speech, and allow far right groups to form online. But yeah, ultimately that is where we are. And as far as where I stand on this, I don't think that we will see any meaningful, helpful change from Facebook. And I think that's largely because companies

Starting point is 00:03:45 do not really have to do anything. My thinking when it comes to Facebook is that nothing there will ever meaningfully change. And that's because nothing short of, let's say government intervention is going to do something. Understand, I'm not calling for that. But I mean, just think about it. How many of us actively use,

Starting point is 00:03:59 and sometimes to an obsessive extent, if we really looked at the numbers, social media platforms that we even think are evil and leading to the decay of society Understand I say that while understanding my mindset is not helpful. Everyone has this mindset. Nothing will ever change We will not rise to the moment. So I guess I'm kind of left standing here going. Will you prove me wrong? I hope people do but I don't expect it and then let's talk about a story that takes on the idea that there is no Such thing as a good billionaire. And depending on how you take this story,

Starting point is 00:04:27 you'll either say, yes, see, that is correct, or it'll push against that idea. So this news is about an 89 year old man by the name of Chuck Feeney. And most people have likely never heard of this guy. When you think of billionaires, you probably think of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk.

Starting point is 00:04:40 But among the list of billionaires, we've also seen Chuck Feeney. You know, he co-founded the airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers back in 1960, then going on to make billions, and along the way he got into philanthropy. You know, with a number of billionaires, we see a lot of philanthropy. Some like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett being a part of the Giving Pledge. This pledge where you have ultra wealthy people saying they will give away at least half their wealth. But that pledge has nothing on what Chuck Feeney is doing. In fact, you had Warren Buffett saying, "'Chuck was a cornerstone in terms of inspiration "'for the Giving Pledge.

Starting point is 00:05:09 "'He's a model for us all. "'It's going to take me 12 years after my death "'to get done what he's doing within his lifetime.'" And regarding what Buffett is referencing there, Chuck Feeney has now officially given away almost every single dollar he's made. Reportedly, over the last 40 years, Chuck has given away over $8 billion. If you're

Starting point is 00:05:25 like, why have I never heard of this guy? Often he donated anonymously. With Forbes writing that Chuck back in 2012 estimated that he had set aside about $2 million for he and his wife's retirement, which meant that he had effectively given away 375,000% more than his current net worth. And if that is not a fantastic example of a BAMF, I don't know what is. I think part of the reason I'm even sharing this story is not only because it is inspiring, but because it completely goes against the way that I was personally raised. I didn't have money growing up,

Starting point is 00:05:53 so this concept of it's we, not me, that wasn't even a part of the conversation. The conversation was, hey, you want it, win it, life? You make money. If you make some money, what are you gonna do? Buy some shit that you think is gonna make you happy, and then make more. Then with the rise of social media,

Starting point is 00:06:05 show the stuff you made. Now it's also easier to compare and contrast what you and others have. Now you gotta make more, otherwise you are less than this other person. And you can only do that for so long before you realize, oh, am I just an empty vessel that consumes? And understand, I'm not saying the pursuit for more

Starting point is 00:06:18 is inherently evil, it's just that I don't think we often talk about the second step, what we do with it. Once we've solidified and made safe Me how do we once again think about we and then to take this idea in this concept and make it more accessible Oh very likely not engaging in extremes like we're seeing with Chuck. What could we do more with the money that we have? What could we do more with the time that we have because we can't use those things once we die well about a week from today 99% of people won't be thinking about Chuck Feeney, the impact he has had on so many people will exist

Starting point is 00:06:49 for the rest of his life and even after because our actions on this planet, good and bad, they outlive us. And also, I felt like I needed to take a break for a second explaining all the different ways the world is currently on fire. And the last thing that we're gonna talk about today is this most recent and massive update

Starting point is 00:07:03 around the Boeing 737 MAX 8. And since it's been a while since we've covered this story, I'm gonna start with some background. So the MAX 8 was the Boeing model that resulted in two plane crashes just five months apart. The first was in October of 2018, when one of the planes operated by Lion Air crashed off the coast of Indonesia,

Starting point is 00:07:18 resulting in the death of 189 people. Then in March of 2019, another MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed outside of Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. And those crashes of course led to the worldwide grounding of the MAX 8 and numerous investigations. And those investigations quickly found that both of these crashes were linked to a new software system

Starting point is 00:07:36 in the MAX 8s called MCAS, or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. And to simplify this for everyone that is not an aerospace engineer, all you need to know is that MCAS was designed to automatically correct the level the plane was flying at to prevent it from stalling and falling out of the sky.

Starting point is 00:07:51 But the investigations into both of those flights and crashes found that in both flights, the MCAS had actually pushed the plane's noses down at a dangerous angle. And when the pilots then tried to stabilize, MCAS kept pushing them down again and again until they eventually went into uncontrollable nosedives. And to make matters even worse and more concerning,

Starting point is 00:08:08 after that first crash, numerous pilots came forward and said not only had they not been trained on MCAS, they had not been told about MCAS, but also it had been left out of their flight manuals. And so with all of this, you had these big questions of how did the MAX 8s get approved to fly with software that could cause them to crash? And why the hell did the pilots not know about it?

Starting point is 00:08:25 And so connected to those questions, and the reason we're talking about this today is just this morning, the Democratic majority of the House Transportation Committee released the results of their investigation. And it has been described as the most comprehensive report yet in looking at both the role Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, played

Starting point is 00:08:40 in developing the MAX 8 and certifying it to fly. And according to reports, the investigation took 18 months and is based on interviews with two dozen Boeing and FAA employees and around 600,000 pages of records. And in that report, the Democrats wrote that their findings revealed that the MAX 8 crashes were, quote, the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers,

Starting point is 00:08:58 a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA. The report also going on to outline five overarching themes that led to such fundamental problems with the plane's design, construction, and certification. The first being production pressure. There, the report notes that there was a lot of financial pressure on Boeing to quickly build and certify the MAX 8.

Starting point is 00:09:16 This because the model was being developed to compete with a new line of planes being developed by their biggest rival Airbus. With the report saying that this led to Boeing prioritizing cost cutting, production goals, and maintaining their schedule to meet certification deadlines over public safety. The second theme noted is faulty design

Starting point is 00:09:30 and performance assumption. Here specifically saying that Boeing made fundamentally faulty assumptions about critical technologies on the 737 MAX, most notably with MCAS. Then going on to list a handful of examples, like the fact that MCAS relied on only one sensor. So if that sensor failed as it did during both of those crashes, it could cause MCAS to engage when it sensor, so if that sensor failed as it did during both of those crashes,

Starting point is 00:09:45 it could cause MCAS to engage when it shouldn't. Also saying that Boeing expected the pilots to be able to deal with that malfunction even though they didn't know the system even existed. And incredibly notable here, the report claims that Boeing failed to classify MCAS as a safety critical system, which would have attracted greater FAA scrutiny

Starting point is 00:10:00 during the certification process. With it also noting that the operation of MCAS also violated Boeing's own internal design guidelines. Right, and so those first two themes are mostly centered around Boeing, but the last three all focus on the relationship between Boeing and the FAA. With the third overarching problem

Starting point is 00:10:15 that the report flagged being culture of concealment, writing, in several critical instances, Boeing withheld crucial information from the FAA, its customers, and 737 MAX pilots. This including yes, not telling pilots about MCAS, but also failing to disclose that a crucial safety feature that said if the sensors that triggered MCAS were giving incorrect data was in fact inoperable

Starting point is 00:10:34 on the vast majority of the 737 MAX fleet, despite having been certified as a standard aircraft feature and very significantly concealing a flight simulation where it took a test pilot more than 10 seconds to respond to an unwanted MCAS activation. A condition the pilot found to be catastrophic given the fact that federal guidelines assume

Starting point is 00:10:51 pilots would respond to massive system problems like this within four seconds. While the report does note that Boeing was not legally required to disclose those things to the FAA or its customers, it is inconceivable and inexcusable that Boeing withheld this information from them. Then we have the fourth theme, which was conflicted representation and regarding that the committee found that the FAA's current oversight structure with respect to Boeing creates inherent conflicts of interest that have jeopardized the safety of the flying public.

Starting point is 00:11:14 With the report going on to note problems with authorized representatives, which if you aren't aware is a very special thing. They are Boeing employees who are given the ability to act on behalf of the FAA and certify that some of the plane's designs meet the agency's requirements. With the committee saying they found several documented instances where those representatives failed to disclose important information to the FAA that could have enhanced the safety of the 737 MAX aircraft. And also noting that some of the concerns raised internally by those representatives that were not relayed to the FAA, not investigated or dismissed by Boeing employees, involved the same issues with MCAS that caused both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes. And the final theme that the committee outlined was Boeing's influence over the FAA's oversight structure.

Starting point is 00:11:53 And here the investigation found multiple instances documented by FAA officials where FAA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing design approaches on its transport category aircraft were potentially unsafe and failed to comply with FAA regulations only to have FAA management overruled them and side with Boeing instead. Also adding that compromises the integrity

Starting point is 00:12:12 and independence of the FAA's oversight abilities and the safety of airline passengers. Right, and it's that last part that is extremely important in understanding both how we got here and how we move forward. For years, the FAA at the direction of Congress has been giving more and more regulatory oversight powers to plane manufacturers like Boeing.

Starting point is 00:12:28 And generally, crashes that killed hundreds of people aside, that has been a win-win for both the FAA and Boeing, right? The FAA is a government agency with very limited resources. Giving Boeing more authority over the day-to-day safety assessments lets them focus their energy on the big picture safety aspects of the certification process. And for Boeing, which has lobbied Congress

Starting point is 00:12:44 in favor of these practices, it cuts back on a ton of red tape so they can speed of the certification process. And for Boeing, which has lobbied Congress in favor of these practices, it cuts back on a ton of red tape so they can speed up the certification of their planes and compete with foreign rivals like Airbus. So with this, the FAA has argued that they were using this cooperation with the manufacturers to make planes safer. But watchdog groups and unions

Starting point is 00:12:57 have repeatedly expressed concerns that letting manufacturers self-regulate too much could compromise safety and allow plane manufacturers to act in their own self-interest. With those concerns growing after the crashes and the mounting evidence from the investigations and hearings. And with the release of this report

Starting point is 00:13:10 and this whole situation, one of the big standouts and reactions was from representative Peter DeFazio. He chairs that committee and one of the things that he said was that it was mind boggling that both FAA and Boeing came to the conclusion that the certification of the MAX was compliant. Adding, the problem is it was compliant and not safe and people died. And continuing, it's clear evidence that the certification of the MAX was compliant. Adding, the problem is it was compliant and not safe

Starting point is 00:13:25 and people died. And continuing, it's clear evidence that the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be repaired. This is a tragedy that never should have happened. It could have been prevented and we're going to take steps in our legislation to see that it never happens again

Starting point is 00:13:37 as we reform the system. But there, a key thing to note is while the Senate Commerce Committee is set to consider a bill just this week to strengthen the airplane certification process, House Republicans on the Transportation Committee did not endorse the Democrats' investigative report, with the committee's ranking member,

Starting point is 00:13:50 Representative Sam Graves, saying, "'If aviation and safety experts determine "'that areas in the FAA's processes "'for certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, "'then Congress will act.'" But also, the timing of this report comes at an absolutely crucial time. As the New York Times reported,

Starting point is 00:14:02 "'The report was issued as the FAA appeared close to lifting its grounding order for the MAX after test flights this summer. FAA clearance could lead aviation authorities elsewhere to follow suit and allow the plane to fly again as soon as this winter. While Boeing's been doing a lot of work to fix the plane, make it flyable, there are still tons of concerns

Starting point is 00:14:18 because of what these reports have shown. Because it's one thing to fix a plane and it's a completely other thing to fix a system that allowed this to happen. With some call red tape, others might call guardrails. And more specifically in this instance, guardrails that were not there that resulted

Starting point is 00:14:30 in the deaths of 346 people. And in a statement addressing this report, Boeing said they have quote, "'Learned many hard lessons from the crashes "'and mistakes they made,' adding they have made "'fundamental changes to their company as a result "'and continue to look for ways to improve.' "'The FAA for its part responded by saying

Starting point is 00:14:44 "'it looks forward to working with the committee to implement improvements identified in its report. But as for what those changes are and if they actually do anything to change the system, we'll have to wait and see. And that is where I'm going to end today's show. And hey, if you liked today's video, hit us with a like.

Starting point is 00:14:56 If you didn't, go straight to hell. I'm kidding. Also, if you're new here, hit that subscribe button. Also, I always recommend text me at 813-213-4423 for behind the scenes, notifications, et cetera. But of course, as always, 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 9.16 Guess Who Gave Away ALL Their Money! Hate For Profit, Kim Kardashian, Boeing Max 8, & More

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