- 'Sup, you beautiful bastards.
Welcome back to the "Philip DeFranco Show."
Buckle up, hit that Like button
and let's just jump into it.
Yo, first up today we had OnlyFans in the news,
not because I'm finally launching one,
even though I not so secretly wish I could launch one.
As I've been losing weight,
I've been getting addicted to all the nice comments
about my appearance.
I mean, it's not anything special,
but I'm really fucking pumped about this.
And it would be an amazing achievement
because I've always wanted people to just
like me for the way that I look,
not because of like the quality of my character
or personality.
It just seems a whole lot less exhausting.
But, I got so sidetracked.
The reason we're talking about OnlyFans
is because of OnlyFans and Meta,
with a class action lawsuit being filed in California
on behalf of a group of adult content creators
who alleged that OnlyFans bribed Meta
to put creators posting on rival websites
on a terror watch list.
So this terror database was allegedly run
by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism,
or GIFCT.
And by landing on that site,
creators say their reach was limited and earnings suffered.
With notably the founding companies behind the GIFCT
being Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube.
With places like Jezebel noting that
it just takes one of these sites
to flag something as terrorism to make that user hashed,
which then can effectively shadow ban them on other sites.
Now, this suit was first reported by the New York Post,
which said that plaintiffs claimed
that this started back in 2018
when one or more Meta staffers took bribes from OnlyFans.
With those bribes allegedly coming
via Phoenix International, OnlyFans' parent company,
which then allegedly used a secret subsidiary
to send money to offshore bank accounts
set up by the Meta employees,
and the Post going on to say that
the suit claims that by October of 2018,
people who used rival sites to OnlyFans saw a, quote,
"Massive spike in content classification/ filtering activity
that limited their reach, but OnlyFans creators
had a mysterious immunity to this."
The class action suit is being led
by competitor JustFor.Fans,
with attorneys in the suit saying,
"The blacklisting of plaintiff and others
has caused OnlyFans to achieve
a drastically enlarged market share
while its competitors stagnated or declined.
The defendants engaged in a scheme
to misuse a terrorist blacklist
to obtain a competitive advantage."
With a law firm saying that they have
a list of over 21,000 Instagram accounts
that were unfairly tagged for terrorism.
And the creators levying these accusations
say they have suffered real consequences
with Alana Evans telling the Post,
"When I heard that my content
may be listed on the terror watch list, I was outraged.
I was angry because it affected my income
when my social media traffic dropped significantly,
and I was angry because I am the daughter of a veteran
who fought for this country."
And something that is really important to note here
is that this isn't the only lawsuit of this kind, right?
In fact, there's another suit in California
filed by the Adult Performing Artists Guild
with similar accusations.
And back in February, a massive BBC report
outlined another suit filed by rival site FanCentro,
that involves similar allegations
involving an unnamed social media company.
Though that report did note that Facebook,
which is owned by Meta, has been hit with
a subpoena in that case.
And as far as what OnlyFans is saying here,
they gave a statement to the Post saying,
"We are aware that these cases have been filed.
We are not aware of any evidence
which supports these allegations.
The alleged participants have all publicly stated
that these cases have no merit."
While Meta has not responded
to this latest round of reporting,
it told BBC earlier this year,
"These allegations are without merit
and we will address them
in the context of the litigation as needed."
But ultimately, that is where we are here.
We're gonna have to keep our eyes on this,
see what other information comes out.
But no matter what, this is a wild story.
And we're gonna reserve judgment for now.
I mean, it's also not the craziest thing,
because anytime you're talking about something
that involves just absolutely insane money,
absolutely insane things can go down.
But I mean, we've talked about the individual creators
bringing in millions, if not tens of millions
of dollars a year, right?
The Belle Delphine and Lena Plugs of the world.
So just think about how much money is at play
for entire platforms.
And then throw into the mix an allegation that a platform
is abusing a terror watch list
to get a competitive advantage to a competitor
but also potentially, like, ruining people.
This bell can't be unrung,
And I think it's gonna be very important to find out
if these allegations have any basis or not.
And hopefully time will tell.
And then let's talk about committing the perfect crime.
Also in case I find myself for some reason in a court,
this is all hypothetical and for entertainment value only.
- Are you sure about that?
- So let's say your elderly mother's living alone
after her husband died, he was an art collector.
And now she's in the possession
of millions of dollars worth of artwork.
How do you get all those valuables
from her hands into yours?
You've got burglary, but the art's gonna be reported stolen.
You might leave evidence behind.
You're gonna have to fence it
and not get as much value out of it.
Murder is just downright messy,
and that'll attract a lot of police attention.
Well, this woman in Brazil
actually found herself in such a situation.
And she comes up with a plan far more creative, right?
So this starts back in 2020.
And she knows that here 82-year-old mother
is prone to mystical belief.
So she finds an accomplice who pretends to be a psychic,
who then allegedly approaches the mother
with the news that her daughter is sick
and doomed a certain death.
Unless of course the mother pays exorbitant amounts of money
for her daughter's spiritual treatment.
Which the daughter also backs up
feeding personal information
to several more supposed psychics
who corroborate all this bullshit.
And so with this, not only do they get some cash,
but also a foot in the door.
So they proceed to phase two of their plan,
telling the mother, "Oh my God,
your art collection is cursed.
I hate to say it, but it's cursed
with negative energy that needs to be prayed over."
While this is happening,
the daughter fires that domestic employees at the house
so her accomplices can start moving in
and hauling out the artwork.
Though the mother starts eventually getting suspicious,
leading to the masterminds, to proceed to phase three,
with the daughter going pure evil
and allegedly confining her who her home for months
while the group physically threatened her.
And all in all, in the end, they allegedly stole
over $140 million worth of art, cash, and jewelry.
But some of the paintings from renowned Brazilian artists,
including three from an especially famous modernist,
valued at almost $138 million.
With one of those actually found stashed
under the daughter's bed,
which you can see here with the police holding it up.
And of course the good news here
is that we wouldn't know or be talking about any of this
if the authorities hadn't arrested the daughter
and several accomplices yesterday.
And of course we're gonna have to wait to see
what kind of punishment they get.
But in the meantime, these are our douche bags of the day.
Initially creative, yes, but just downright horrible people.
You know, there's no good way to fire employees.
There are best ways, but there's no good way.
It sucks for you.
It sucks for them.
But most importantly, it definitely sucks for them more.
And the reason I'm talking about this today
is because yesterday, the CEO of HyperSocial,
Braden Wallake, he decided to do
a very, very interesting thing.
After a round of layoffs, he decides,
I'm gonna go to LinkedIn and post this.
It's a photo of him crying with the text,
(soft music)
"This will be the most vulnerable thing I'll ever share.
I've gone back and forth whether to post this or not.
We just had to lay off a few of our employees.
I've seen a lot of layoffs
over the last few weeks on LinkedIn.
Most of them are due to the economy
or whatever other reason.
Ours?
My fault."
And in this, he wasn't completely clear
about what led to the layoffs.
Only mentioning that he made a business decision
back in February that didn't seem to pan out.
And writing, "Days like today,
I wish I was a business owner that was only money-driven
and didn't care about who he hurt along the way."
Making it very clear
that he loves them from the bottom of his heart.
So Braden's intentions seem clear here.
He's trying to make it clear
that he is not a heartless business owner.
Because we've covered stories
like a Better.com CEO in the past,
firing a ton of people through a Zoom call,
also just, blah, making it all about him.
But still, Braden's post was taken more as disingenuous
and self-fulfilling.
With people writing things like,
"How about use your network
to help those employees find new jobs
by tagging them and putting them in the spotlight,
as opposing to whining about
making difficult decisions as a leader
and posting a crying selfie?
This is one of the most out of touch posts
I've seen in a long time."
As well as, "Yikes, I was just laid off
along with many others.
If my CEO sent this, I'd probably lose my mind.
You're crying?
I'm crying.
We're crying.
You still have your job.
Put those tears in a jar and make a potion
to help the people's lives you laid off better.
This isn't how you show empathy.
Do more for your employees that were let go
and those still existing."
And over on Twitter,
you had people mocking the entire platform,
saying it was peak lunacy or LinkedIn is not a real place.
Now, in an attempt to be fair to Braden,
I do wanna note, he did make another post
singing praises about the individuals that were let go
and trying to help them get new work.
And while I understand that he was trying to like
share this unique thing to him
and maybe some of the people that follow him,
because they're other CEOs,
that's a private, select group of people conversation.
No one needs to see this publicly.
Like once again, I get it.
It sucks to fire people,
especially when you're laying someone off.
It's not because like they did something wrong.
But their job, the thing that enables them to live
and support themselves,
because most Americans don't actually have
any money in their fucking savings account, it's gone.
Like, there's a way to be vulnerable and honest about this,
but don't turn into a fucking pity party about you.
Like, if you wanna think of yourself as a victim
in this situation, you are the lowest priority victim.
But anyway, I thought the fun way to end this story
isn't gonna be like, what's your opinion about this CEO?
I think most of us are on the same page,
but feel free to correct me.
My question instead is,
what is the worst way you've ever been fired or let go?
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And then we should talk about why Democrat Beto O'Rourke,
who's running to unseat Republican governor
Greg Abbott in Texas said this.
- It may be funny to you, motherfucker,
but it's not funny to me, okay?
(audience cheering)
- And as it turns out, that was not O'Rourke's reaction
to someone yelling that they find "Big Bang Theory" funny,
but rather he was talking about Uvalde
when someone laughed.
- I'm gonna make sure that now 11 weeks
since we lost 19 kids and their two teachers shot to death
with a weapon originally designed for use in combat,
legally purchased by an 18-year-old,
who did not try to obtain one when he was 16 or 17,
but followed the law that's on the books,
ladies and gentlemen, that says that you can buy not one,
you could buy two or more if you want to, AR-15s,
hundreds of rounds of ammunition,
and take that weapon that was originally designed
for use on the battlefields in Vietnam
to penetrate an enemy soldier's helmet at 500 feet
and knock him down dead,
(man laughing)
up against kids at five feet.
It may be funny to you, motherfucker,
but it's not funny to me, okay?
(audience cheering)
You know, all of this ended up sparking
a number of debates online,
one being about the language that he used.
So I'm happy to see him saying, fuck yeah.
We need more politicians being real with their constituents.
But others saying, no, even if the heckler was wrong,
we should do our best preserve civil discourse.
Though there had people pushing back saying,
this is just Democrats doing
what essentially Donald Trump kicked off.
- Sir, I'd hit him on the left, I'd hit him in the right,
I'd hit him in the fucking center, sir, right smack-
(audience cheering)
We'll beat the shit out of them.
Let them beat the shit out of ISIS also.
They're ripping the shit out of the sea.
We're gonna knock the shit out of ISIS.
(audience cheering)
Gonna knock the shit out of it.
You're not gonna raise that fucking price,
(audience cheering) you understand me?
- Like if Donald Trump kept a swear jar,
there'd probably be enough money in there
to pay back all the banks and insurers he defrauded.
But I mean, really, as it turns out,
ever since Trump did arrive on the political scene,
vulgar language has skyrocketed.
With a study by GovPredict finding that politicians
swore on Twitter just 193 times in 2016.
But just a year later, that number jumped almost 1,600,
and then nearly 2,600 the year after that.
And it's not surprising.
In general, people love cursing.
Like still to this day, and it's usually new viewers,
I still sometimes get shit for how I talk,
but this is how I talk in day-to-day life.
And personally, if we go back
to the specific Beto O'Rourke situation,
I'm far more bothered by the fact that
someone would laugh or like heckle
while he's talking about kids being murdered
by essentially weapons of war.
The story's obviously different,
but it's like we talked about yesterday.
People are like attaching and getting like big reactions
on the wrong parts of these stories.
And then finally, today we should talk about
the potentially huge, but so far underwhelming update
to the execution of the search warrant
on Donald Trump's residence at Mar-A-Lago,
where there have been a lot of questions
regarding the specifics here.
What was the probable cause?
What did they find during the execution
of that search warrant?
Because really for the most part,
we've only heard from Donald Trump,
who issued a statement after it happened.
Which is also why you had people saying,
hey, Donald Trump and his people,
they are in possession of the warrant.
They can share the specifics.
But so far, despite all the conversation around this,
they have kept that to themselves,
which may be the reason we saw
attorney general Merrick Garland today
issue a live statement saying.
- Just now the Justice Department has filed a motion
in the southern district of Florida
to unseal a search warrant and property receipt
relating to a court-approved search
that the FBI conducted earlier this week.
- With Garland further adding.
- Copies of both the warrant and the FBI property receipt
were provided on the day of the search
to the former president's counsel,
who was on site during the search.
The search warrant was authorized by a federal court
upon the required finding of probable cause.
- Also going on to say that he personally approved
the decision to seek a search warrant.
And adding that the department
doesn't take that decision lightly.
And going on to defend members of the FBI and DOJ
who have been getting attacked since this happened.
Right, and so with all that, this is without a doubt,
big news, but also at the same time,
felt like this could have been an email.
Or this is the Justice Department saying,
okay, you're trying to form a narrative
because there's not more information out there.
Let's get the information out there.
And there may be legal back and forth here, right?
Trump's likely gonna wanna delay this warrant's release
for as long as he can, which would also kind of confirm
that the DOJ is just calling Trump's bluff here.
But for now I think until we actually see
the warrant get unsealed,
I feel like people are gonna be kind of underwhelmed.
Merrick Garland kind of click baited us.
Or he put out a thumbnail, "Big News!"
But then the content of the video is like, is coming soon.
So for now, we're gonna have to wait and see.
But ultimately that is where that story
and today's show ends.
As always, thank you for watching
and being a part of that conversation down below,
being subscribed to these daily dives into the news.
But as always, my name's Philip DeFranco.
You've just been Philled in.
I love yo faces, and I'll see you next time.