Philip DeFranco


Philip James DeFranco, commonly known by his online nickname PhillyD, and formerly known as sxephil, is an American media host and YouTube personality. He is best known for The Philip DeFranco Show, a news commentary show centered on current events in politics and pop culture.
DeFranco has also been involved in the creation of other successful channels on YouTube, such as the YouTube-funded news channel SourceFed and its nerd culture spinoff SourceFed Nerd. His primary channel has accumulated over 6.6 million subscribers and 2.5 billion views, as of January 2026. Having been involved on YouTube for nearly two decades, he has been cited as a pioneer of YouTube and news coverage online, and has won various awards for his online content.

Early life

DeFranco was born Philip James Franchini Jr. in The Bronx, New York City, New York. He is of Italian descent.
He was a student at the University of South Florida, a biology student at Asheville–Buncombe Technical Community College, and later a junior at East Carolina University. In 2007, DeFranco lived in Tampa, Florida, and later Atlanta, Georgia. Once in Florida, he used his USF student loan to purchase a computer and camera. He worked as a waiter in a number of restaurants while making videos in 2007. DeFranco lived in a car until moving back with his father in Tampa, on condition that he would return to college, which he ultimately did not do.
DeFranco was raised Catholic but later identified as atheist.

YouTube career

''The Philip DeFranco Show''

2006–2011: Early years and building an audience

On September 15, 2006, DeFranco created his YouTube account during his finals at East Carolina University, originally registered as "sxephil", in which he talks about "newsie type stuff, and things that matter to today." DeFranco has cited his early influences as Ze Frank, Dane Cook, and the Vlogbrothers. Early on, he began calling his news-centered videos The Philip DeFranco Show.
Before the YouTube partner program was available, he asked for donations from his viewers after claiming to have run out of money, and selling everything except his Mac, camera, and clothes, and overdrawing his bank account so he could spend a night in a hotel as he found it too scary sleeping in a car in Brooklyn.
In August 2007, DeFranco conducted an experiment by uploading a video titled "Big Boobs and You". The video's thumbnail image was what the title described, except that the image only flashed for a split second. The rest of the video's content was DeFranco talking. It quickly became his most successful video at the time, with 1.8 million views. From then on he changed his content to sex, gossip, and news. In 2012, YouTube redesigned their website, as videos with cleavage thumbnails attracted many clicks but were abandoned instead of being watched.
An online viewer census from September 2007 showed that one-third of his viewers were 16- and 17-year-old girls. DeFranco used his large audience to win a Spore Creature Creator game promotion competition, and in doing so beat celebrities such as Stan Lee, Katy Perry, and Elijah Wood. The winner's prize was to choose which charity would receive a donation of $15,000. He chose the PKD Foundation, an organization dedicated to fighting polycystic kidney disease, which he attributed to his family's history with the condition. DeFranco's large online audience also enabled him to win Wireds Sexiest Geek of 2008 competition, a reader-voted contest. DeFranco entered the 2010s having his "sxephil" channel as the fifth-most subscribed on the platform.

2012–2017: Revision3/Discovery/GroupNine years

Entering 2012, DeFranco was signed with Revision3, a multi-channel network. Revision3 itself was a subsidiary of Discovery Digital Networks. DDN would later be sold by its parent Discovery Communications into Group Nine Media, in 2016. The Philip DeFranco Show was fully acquired by Revision3 in May 2013, along with his other assets at the time.
In September 2012, it was reported that DeFranco received almost 30 million views a month, while by October, his channel was noted to have accumulated 2 million subscribers. The Philip DeFranco Show was nominated at the 3rd Streamy Awards in the "Best First-Person Series" and "Best News and Culture Series" categories. In January 2013, DeFranco took part in a Google+ Hangout with United States Vice President Joe Biden and Guy Kawasaki, discussing gun laws.

2017–present: Returning to independence

All of his channel's videos from before March 13, 2017, have been removed from public viewing. In May of that year, DeFranco announced he was no longer working with Group Nine Media and would instead be an independent creator again. In addition to this, DeFranco announced the launch of DeFranco Elite, a crowdfunding initiative on Patreon; DeFranco Elite functioned as a way for fans to help fund The Philip DeFranco Show, which DeFranco stated would help avoid the series' funding to be tied to YouTube ad revenue. By the end of the year, The Outline noted that DeFranco had over 13,000 Patreon subscribers donating an amount of money that while undisclosed was enough to rank him within the platform's top 20 creators. In 2019, DeFranco was earning approximately $50,000 a month from Patreon.
DeFranco's coverage of issues concerning YouTube culture—such as PewDiePie's alleged anti-Semitism controversy and the DaddyOFive child abuse story—were among those most cited by online and mainstream media publications. In his stories covering the DaddyOFive channel, DeFranco highlighted the channel's creators Mike and Heather Martin, and the abuse they inflicted on their children in videos posted on the channel. DeFranco's coverage and criticism of the channel sparked a community backlash and heightened media attention that led to the Martins losing custody of two of their children, and ultimately being charged with and found guilty of child neglect. Another topic DeFranco was noted by media publications for covering in 2017, was that of demonetization of YouTube creators. DeFranco continued to be frequently cited as critical of the platform, regarding issues involving ad revenue and demonetization, with noted criticism of ads being allowed on the YouTube channels of mainstream talk shows but not on those of native creators. Due to hot-button topics that can arise when delivering the news, DeFranco's content is particularly prone to being deemed "unfriendly" to advertisers.
In June 2017, DeFranco's channel was cited by The Verge as having over 5.4 million subscribers. DeFranco's subscriber growth slowed down in 2017, although his channel's monthly views continued to yield growing numbers.
In October 2018, BetterHelp gained attention from YouTube personalities after concerns were raised about alleged use of unfair pricing, paid reviews from actors, and questionable terms of service. Along with creators like Shane Dawson, DeFranco faced backlash for being among their most high-profile supporters. Both DeFranco and BetterHelp CEO Alon Matas addressed the issue, giving statements to Polygon's Julia Alexander. On October 15, DeFranco tweeted that he had formally ended his relationship with BetterHelp. In 2020, Anthony Fauci appeared on DeFranco's show for an interview, with the goal of bringing information related to the COVID-19 pandemic to younger audiences.

Secondary channels and other projects

In 2007, DeFranco opened his second YouTube channel, "'PhilipDeFranco", which includes a series of vlogs which he calls The Vloggity. He also streamed on BlogTV twice a week and took a cut of the revenue which was up to $12 CPMs. In 2008, he stated in an interview that his listed salary of $250,000 from a number of sources on the Internet, including and beyond YouTube, was initially a joke, but would become accurate. He has been paid by companies to create videos to promote Carl's Jr.'s burgers, and the US television series Lie to Me and Fringe.
DeFranco was a founding member of The Station, but left only a few months after it was created. DeFranco's early attempts at launching channels with scopes outside of his eponymous news series included BamBamKaboosh and TheDeFrancoUpdate. DeFranco also launched Like Totally Awesome, in which video reviews of a movie, video game, or technology were submitted by viewers and compiled into an episode of a video series called The Quad. The show was run by Sarah Penna, the creator of the YouTube multi-channel network Big Frame. Early in his YouTube career, Penna aided DeFranco, securing him coverage in news articles and magazines, such as Fast Company. One of those articles mentioned that DeFranco frequently collaborated with the advertising agency, Mekanism.
In July 2010, DeFranco co-created CuteWinFail, along with Toby Turner; the online series was described by Fruzsina Eördögh of ReadWrite as "essentially the YouTube equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos." In 2011, DeFranco launched ForHumanPeoples, a merchandise line. In October 2013, as part of his network, DeFranco launched an accompanying ForHumanPeoples YouTube channel, based on the clothing and merchandise line.

''Hooking Up''

In October 2008, DeFranco co-starred with Jessica Rose and Kevin Wu in Hooking Up, written and directed by Woody Tondorf as a promo for HBOLabs. Hooking Up is a scripted 10-episode web series set at a fictional university where the students spend most of their time emailing and using Facebook, but still manage to miscommunicate. Guest appearances on Hooking Up were made by Kevin Nalty, Michael Buckley, and other popular Internet celebrities.
By the show's second day on YouTube, it had received more than 450,000 views. Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian said that many Web surfers have "scoffed at what they see as a cynical attempt to cash in."