- Ethan Klein, just publicly slapped
Triller founder, Ryan Kavanaugh, in the face with his dick.
(production ping)
metaphorically speaking.
- Stop it, get some help.
- And he did so with the help of Lady Justice.
So if you don't know,
Ethan has a massively successful podcast, the H3 Podcast,
and Ethan has a relationship with lawsuits
kinda like how I have a relationship with cookies.
I know what's best for me not to even have one,
but if I'm gonna have one, I might as well have seven.
Like I honestly don't know if any other creator out there
has had to deal with more lawsuits than this guy.
But I do wanna note, he's not the one starting the lawsuits
and he just keeps winning them.
With his most recent ones
being with Triller and Ryan Kavanaugh,
there have been multiple ongoing cases
with these two for a while now
with some already coming down in Ethan's favor.
Earlier this year, Ethan revealed
one case involving a website
that he made mocking Triller founder, Ryan Kavanaugh,
had been thrown out.
There was also a case where Triller accused Ethan
of tortious interference over remarks he made saying,
that Triller falsely advertised
Kevin Hart as a Triller user.
With Ethan then filing an Anti-Slapp motion,
which was later granted with legal commentator
Emily D. Baker explaining that this means
the case is dismissed with prejudice.
Cannot be refiled and Klein can go after Triller
for all legal fees and costs,
which they are entitled to based on this ruling.
Which brings us to the latest update in this saga,
because yesterday Ethan tweeted,
"Just won 100% of our attorney fees from @triller
for their frivolous and malicious lawsuit."
But adding, "I doubt I will ever see a cent of that tho
because they seem to be on the verge of bankruptcy."
But notably, this situation is not over
as Ethan himself noted.
"Our copyright and defamation lawsuits are still ongoing.
We will have updates in September hopefully."
That copyright suit likely being in reference
to one regarding the alleged distribution
of a Jake Paul fight.
As well as the alleged defamation one
likely being one coming from Ryan Kavanaugh,
but also taking a closer look at this.
This is not the end of the bad stuff for Triller
or what was Ethan talking about with them
possibly having to declare bankruptcy.
What's the money situation?
Are there other problems in paradise?
And as it turns out, yeah,
and it seems connected to Doja Cat
and Lil Nas X among others,
because while Triller is trying
to hit Ethan Klein with a copyright suit,
Sony Music's actually trying to get Triller
for both copyright infringement and breach of contract.
Alleging that Triller has failed
to pay Sony millions of dollars in licensing fees
for songs like "Say So" by Doja Cat
and "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X.
Big valuable songs that became super viral
and popular in content creation.
And according to the lawsuit, Sony and Triller
began a distribution agreement back in 2016
renewing an amended version in December of 2021,
but Triller allegedly stopped paying fees under the deal.
With the suit claiming while Triller had historically
failed to make payments in a timely manner,
its failures recently escalated.
Starting in March, 2022 Triller failed
to make any monthly payments required
under the agreement totaling millions of dollars
and saying that, "After months of Sony Music
requesting Triller pay its outstanding and overdue fees,
and near-total radio silence and response.
They notified Triller on July 22nd
that it was in material breach of the Agreement."
And adding that, after Triller failed to do
what they were supposed to do,
Sony terminated the agreement on August 8th.
Allegedly informing Triller that
any continued use of Sony Music content
would constitute willful copyright infringement.
With Sony Music adding, "Nevertheless,
Triller has continued to reproduce,
distribute, publicly perform,
display, create derivative works
and otherwise exploit valuable Sony Music Content
in connection with the Triller App."
And going even further, to allege that
they actually have money.
Claiming that, "During the exact same months
that Triller was failing to make
licensing payments to Sony Music
it went on a purchasing spree,"
and noting their recent deals buying,
Julius, an influencer marketing software,
as well as Fangage, a platform where creators
can host and sell content to fans.
And so with all this, Sony Music
is seeking damages and a jury trial,
but also on the other side of this
it seems like Triller is fighting back
giving a statement to the Hollywood Reporter saying,
"We have yet to be served,
but from what we've seen, this lawsuit from Sony Music
grossly mischaracterizes our relationship with them
and leans into the bully persona large music labels
are often criticized for."
(Phillip laughing)
Pot meet kettle.
"We are focused on furthering the creator economy
and we will continue to seek a contract
that achieves that goal."
But adding, "If necessary, we will defend
our case in court."
And claiming that the process of removing
a music catalog is not immediate.
And as of today, all identified Sony Music
has been removed from Triller.
But also with this, I do wanna note,
this is not like the first lawsuit Triller
has faced even in recent weeks.
Getting sued earlier this month
by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland,
who claim that they're owed payments from Triller
over its acquisition of their
live streaming rap battle show.
As well as last year, Universal Music
pulling its catalog from Triller over accusations
that it was not paying artists for music use.
But ultimately, that's where we are right now.
And as we look to see what happens next,
I wanna pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts with all of this?
(upbeat music)
Stop airdropping me pictures of your balls please.
Is a very simple and very reasonable request
that one pilot had to make of his passengers
on a recent Southwest Airlines flight,
because reportedly they're all sitting on the tarmac
getting ready to lift off for their destination
in Cabo San Lucas
and all of a sudden some people's phones ping.
And sure enough, when they look down
they're getting AirDrop nudes.
Also for non-Apple users, AirDrop's just a feature
that lets you send files
to other Apple devices through Bluetooth.
But the pilot gets wind of this airdrop.
He's seemingly not impressed by their artistic talent,
let's call it.
And he's also not someone
that keeps his feelings to himself.
So he gets on the Intercom.
What happens next was caught in this viral TikTok.
- [Pilot] So here's the deal,
this continues while we're on the ground,
I'm gonna have to pull back to the gate.
Everybody's gonna have to get off.
We're gonna have to get security involved
and it's vacation that's gonna be ruined.
So you folks, whatever that AirDrop thing is
about sending the naked pictures.
Let's get yourself to the Cabo.
- He's like put your phone in airplane mode
and stopped sending me pictures of your dick.
And here's the thing, this isn't like an outlier.
Other words, plane, AirDrop and nudes
being used in numerous sentences.
Like last June, you saw this flight attendant
also with Southwest,
which by the way, what's happening on Southwest.
Are y'all okay.
But yeah, this flight attendant confronting a passenger
who allegedly airdropped is genitals to others on the plane
from a device named Larry's iPad.
With him heard telling her,
and just so we're on the same page,
this is not a way to ever get out of anything,
he was quote, "Just having a little fun."
And as it turns out this whole thing, it's so prevalent
that the whole act of sending unsolicited nudes
through electronic means already known as cyber flashing.
And it's already outlawed in states like Texas.
And just last week, the California Assembly
sent another bill to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk
that would allow people
who receive this type of content to actually sue the sender.
Well also, talking about airdrops on planes specifically.
It hasn't all been nudes.
Like last May on this Turkish flight in Israel.
It's about to take off when all of a sudden
several passengers get airdrops,
but the photos weren't of the forbidden coin purse,
but rather videos of planes crashing,
which by the way, should legally
allow those people to stomp you out.
One woman got so freaked out from this,
she had a panic attack and another reportedly fainted,
but the flight then halted
and the people responsible detained.
And so I guess to the people
that think this is a good idea,
I'll just say, don't be stupid, stupid
'cause the law's catching up with you now.
And two, can we just not be dicks to strangers
nor show our dicks to strangers unless they ask us nicely.
(upbeat music)
- Twitter and porn go together like peanut butter and jelly,
which makes sense is one of the only social media platforms
that doesn't crack down on it.
I mean, you can't even show a nipple on Instagram
and I've just, I've seen things
in a Starbucks line accidentally on Twitter
that is a bit much, I'll leave it at that.
But all of that makes it all the less surprising
that Twitter was actually considering embracing that
and even launching and OnlyFans competitor.
But in considering that realizing,
oh my God, we have a huge problem here.
So according to documents obtained
by the Verge in spring of this year,
Twitter was looking into how it could monetize
all the porn on the site.
With the basic idea being,
hey, let's just make a connected OnlyFans clone.
Adult content creators would be allowed
to sell subscriptions of their content directly on Twitter.
They're essentially doing that already.
It would encourage people to stay on Twitter.
It would be a one stop shop
and there's a ton of money in it.
OnlyFans has projected to bring in
$2.5 billion in revenue this year,
which is a fuck ton of money in general,
but also for Twitter.
But if Twitter would somehow
hypothetically capture all of that
it'd be a 50% increase in revenue for Twitter.
So even capturing a small part of that
would be a massive win.
However, that's where we started
seeing concerns and problems.
For concerns, are we going to anger our advertisers,
which are currently how Twitter makes most of its money?
And so reportedly, they put together a so-called Red Team
whose job was to pressure test the decision
to allow adult creators to monetize on the platform
and to do so by specifically focusing on
what it would look like for Twitter
to do this safely and responsibly.
And almost immediately they slammed the brakes on this.
Finding that Twitter as is actually,
lack the ability to police porn on the platform
and of particular concern was the fact that
Twitter cannot accurately detect CP
and non-consensual nudity at scale.
And the Red Team also concluding
that a subscription service would just make
this problem even worse.
So because of this story and the documents
it's put a spotlight back on the fact
that over the years researchers have shown
that CP and revenge porn have been
ongoing problems for the platform.
Especially, when you consider that much of the content
is reported to a database called PhotoDNA
and used by platforms
to quickly match identifying photos and delete them.
But obviously, that's a situation that just looks backwards,
and some reports have found that
nearly 84% of the exploitive content on Twitter is new.
Meaning it's not in the database until they put it in there.
And unlike Google or Facebook,
both of which have to deal with these same issues,
Twitter doesn't have nearly the same resources
to automate ways to automatically detect this content
as it's failed to turn a profit in 8 of the last 10 years.
Meaning that it actually relies on a team of people
to manually sift through all of this.
And based on reports right now,
it doesn't seem like Twitter
is going to do much to expand its abilities.
With it being said, some solutions
were just way too expensive
or could put people's real identities at risk
if there was a data breach.
And what appears to be the real nail in the coffin here,
was that on August 23rd the group
that was looking into how to combat exploitive content
allegedly had its priorities changed
to stopping span accounts amid pressure from Elon Musk.
But ultimately, that's a situation as it appears now
and we'll have to wait to see if anything changes.
(gentle music)
Reports of separation anxiety in dogs
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(upbeat music)
There's a war going on in China right now.
And it's being waged between the government,
the banks and a whole lot of fuckin' furious people
who just want their money back.
So the story begins with four rural banks
in the central Henan province,
where last month we saw hundreds of people
protesting outside the local branch
of the People's Bank of China,
which was the largest demonstration since the pandemic.
all those people were there,
because those banks had frozen their deposits since April,
leaving as many as 400,000 people
unable to access their money.
Here we're talking day-to-day surviving money
as well as people's life savings.
So understandably, they want their money back,
but police and plain clothes security personnel
show up and absolutely brutalize them mercilessly.
Dragging some downstairs, throwing others into buses.
And at the time nobody knew for sure
why these deposits were frozen
except that the government was investigating
the banks for illegal fundraising.
But now we seem to know more,
because local authorities announced
that they have arrested 234 people allegedly involved in
China's largest banking fraud scheme ever.
Saying that a criminal gang took over the four banks
and offered depositors false promises
of annual returns as high as 18%.
It was basically a Ponzi scheme
and adding that they illegally marketed
their services online via third party platforms,
even though village banks aren't supposed
to take deposits from outside their local area,
which also isn't too surprising
since small lenders in China tend to be more corrupt
with more opaque ownership and governed structures.
And competition from bigger banks has pressured them
to seek other ways to attract investors
hence the absurdly high returns.
Now, as far as the victims here,
the authorities are compensating some of them.
Announcing the first round of repayments
to those with less than $7,200 in deposits
right after last month's protests.
And now this week saying depositors
with between 58,000 and $72,000
would be the focus of a second round of repayments.
With the authorities adding,
"After this round of repayments,
the centralized repayment work will be largely completed,
and further matters will be dealt with
by the four rural banks."
But not everyone has gotten their money back
and it is unclear whether or not they will.
And very notably, all of this comes as the coronavirus
has slowed economic growth in China
with a bubbling real estate crisis
also threatening to sink the property sector.
And that's without mentioning President Pooh Bear
moving to secure an unprecedented third term
at the 20th party Congress later this year.
So social stability is especially important
leading up to that,
but ultimately, that's where we are for now though.
I wanna go back to China in the future episodes
to talk about the real estate situation there
and what it could mean for the global economy.
There's a lot to talk about.
(dramatic music)
Why are people so mean is a real fuckin' question
Donald Trump asked yesterday.
The least self-aware man on the planet.
It's like they didn't let me
overthrow democracy the first time.
Now we gotta wait a few years to try again.
Now, as far as what that's in reference to
it may be some of the very important news
that we need to talk about today.
So where we'll start is the Justice Department
has now provided its most detailed account so far
on evidence that Trump and his team obstructed justice
in the criminal investigation
into the classified documents improperly kept at Mar-a-Lago.
With the details being laid out in a court filing yesterday,
which very ironically was only made by the DOJ
in response to the fact that Trump requested
to have the seized documents be vetted by a third party.
And in this devastating filing,
the DOJ also presents the clearest picture
of the extensive efforts investigators took
to obtain the documents Trump was wrongfully holding
at his estate before they launched the raid.
- Congratulations, you played yourself.
- With the DOJ stating that the FBI
first reviewed 15 boxes of documents
containing 184 classified documents
that the National Archives had seized
from Mar-a-Lago back in May.
And that only after extensive delays
because Trump and his team refused
to give them to the archives for several months.
With them then attempting to block the FBI
from viewing those documents
once they finally were obtained for several more months.
And following that review, the DOJ developed evidence
indicating that dozens of additional boxes
remained at the premises
that were also likely to contain classified information.
So it was only after a result of all of that,
that they obtained a subpoena
to collect the remaining documents.
And after Trump's lawyers requested an extension
to turn over the materials
that DOJ went tomorrow Mar-a-Lago on June 3rd
and the former president's council
gave them a single accordion envelope of documents.
And very important here, one of Trump's lawyers
who the DOJ identified as the custodian of records
produced literally signed a letter certifying
that to the full extent of their knowledge
there had been a diligent search conducted on the boxes
Trump took from the White House.
And that quote, "All documents
that are responsive to the subpoena,"
had been turned over to the authorities
in that one accordion envelope.
But of course we now know that was not all the documents
that Trump had taken and far from it.
With the DOJ explicitly saying that
the FBI later uncovered multiple sources of evidence
that indicated Trump's team hadn't given them everything.
And that classified documents remained
at the premises despite the lawyer's sworn statement.
And that investigators had, "also developed evidence
that government records were likely concealed
and removed from the Storage Room
and that efforts were likely taken
to obstruct the government's investigation."
With all of that, of course, then ultimately,
leading to the officials to obtain the warrant
for the FBI raid with the DOJ going on to say
that in just a few hours of that search
the FBI had recovered twice as many documents
with classification markings
as the supposed diligence search
at the former President's council
and other representatives had weeks to perform.
And saying it, "...calls into serious question
the representations made in the June 3rd certification
and cast doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter."
The filing also providing new details
about the extent of the classified documents Trump had kept
and how secretive they were.
With agents ultimately taking more than 100 documents
in 13 boxes with classification markings,
including some of the most
restrictive top secret classifications in writing.
In some instances, even the FBI
counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys
conducting the review,
they were required to get additional clearances
before they were permitted to review certain documents.
And the DOJ has now even further revealed
that the FBI found three classified documents
stashed in desks inside Trump's office.
So ridiculous and damning shit.
Also, it's massively consequential for a few reasons.
First of all, it gives us some incredibly key insight
into the investigation.
But keep in mind here, Trump is being investigated
for three violations of federal law
with the first pertaining to the Espionage Act,
which covers matters of national security,
while the other two pertained to matters
of improperly processing and concealing government documents
as well as doing so with the intent
to obstruct an investigation.
While the classified documents will likely play
a big role in questions of national security,
the most important revelations in this new filing concern
whether Trump and his legal team
intentionally mislead the DOJ
while continuing to illegally possess
and conceal these documents.
And another reason this is so crucial
is because it also directly contradicts
many of Trump's arguments in his defense.
Since the raid Trump has repeatedly claimed
that he cooperated with the DOJ,
but his filing clearly shows
that not only did Trump and his team not cooperate
it pulled out every stop to prevent officials
from seeing and obtaining these documents.
They even potentially lied about giving up all the documents
they had literally been subpoenaed to give up
and concealed hundreds more.
And beyond all that, Trump has also continually asserted
that the documents were declassified,
which is also something he pushed
again on truth social today.
And that some were protected by executive privilege.
Though very importantly, his lawyers have never said
the files were declassified
and top officials have actively refuted that.
Now that DOJ has also revealed in its filing
that Trump and his lawyers never said
that the documents contained both in the boxes
sieged by the archives, nor in the envelope
they later gave investigators were declassified
or protected under executive privilege.
So at least the way it looks,
looks very fucked up and bad for Trump and his team.
But also, I will not hold my breath
to see him actually held accountable for something.
I know the reality of most things is like
something seems impossible until it's done,
but so far, no matter how egregious shit
around Trump has been,
it feels like people are just trying to grab water.
And so for now we just have to wait and see
and that's actually the end of this story
and today's show.
As always thank you for watching
and being subscribed to my daily dives into the news.
No matter what day it is, you can just type in PhillyD.tv
and there's a new video.
We've been posting shorter ones over the weekend
in addition to the full-sized shows.
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.