Arizona is finally on track to make sure kids get a cut when parents turn their childhoods into content.
Yesterday, a Senate committee unanimously approved HB2192, which would require parents who monetize internet content featuring a minor to deposit a portion of earnings into a trust for the child. It’s headed for a full Senate vote, then to Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk in the coming weeks.
If it becomes law, Arizona would join a growing list of states putting guardrails on the wildly lucrative kidfluencer economy and finally acknowledge the power imbalance of adults profiting from kids who can’t meaningfully consent.
But it’s also a neat little case study in who holds power at the Capitol.
For the past three years, Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez has introduced bills to protect child vloggers. She worked with former Disney child actor Alyson Stoner, who has encouraged states to take up kidfluencer protections. We wrote about an iteration of Gutierrez’s bill, and the dark side of family vlogging, back in 2024.
Her bills never progressed in Arizona's Republican-dominated Legislature.
Arizona’s own “Crazy Middles” family vlogging channel has more than 820,000 YouTube Subscribers, and per their bio, makes content about their 22 children while “promoting the importance of adoption.” This installment has more than 3 million views.
But this year, Republican Rep. Julie Willoughby introduced similar legislation to regulate how minors are featured in content creation.
It was written by Google, the parent company of YouTube, where many family vloggers and kid creators post their content.
“I think whenever you have an industry trying to help regulate and mitigate in a positive way, they are the best ones to kind of bring that forward,” Willoughby told us. “They know the ins and outs of how individuals get paid, and the ad revenue sharing — much more than most of us do here at the legislative body.”
Google representative Colin Larson told lawmakers the bill is “model legislation” — the same protections have been passed in Arkansas, Illinois and Utah. Colorado’s state House advanced the measure on Monday.
It’s a practical strategy: By rolling out boilerplate bills across state capitols, Google effectively writes the rules for an industry it dominates.
And since states with some of the biggest family-vlogging ecosystems often overlap with more religious or culturally conservative communities, a small number of state laws can touch a large number of channels.
Google’s latest model bill in Arizona would require parents who make money from content featuring their kid to put a portion of those earnings into a trust for the child, but it only applies if the minor appears in at least 30% of the creator’s content in 30 days and the creator earned at least $15,000 in the prior year.
It would also require platforms like YouTube to provide a way for the child, once they turn 18, to request the removal of content that features their likeness.
Some former kid influencers have called for those “right to be forgotten” provisions after growing up and realizing their most private moments (such as potty-training accidents and puberty milestones) were turned into permanent internet content.
If parents don’t comply, the bill gives the child stars a path to force the removal of content when they turn 18 by suing their parents, and not the platform. But it doesn’t prevent platforms like YouTube from continuing to host — and profit from — those videos in the meantime.
The push for statewide family vlogging regulation took off in 2023, after YouTube mom Ruby Franke’s 12-year-old son fled to a neighbor’s house with open wounds and signs of malnourishment. Franke is now in prison after pleading guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse, and internet sleuths later resurfaced years of her videos showing harsh punishments, including withholding food and “bed privileges.”
In response to those calls for regulation, Google has started pushing template bills that set kidfluencer rules state by state. YouTube can demonetize a video or wipe out a channel’s ad revenue when it decides content crosses the line, but state laws that put child labor compliance duties on the parents make it a lot easier for platforms to avoid blame.
Gutierrez, who started pushing for Arizona-level regulations in 2023, said Google, which keeps about half of YouTube creators’ ad revenue, shouldn’t have a say in the kidfluencer legislation.
Last month, she raised that frustration publicly on the House floor as lawmakers prepared to take a final vote on Willoughby’s Google-backed bill.
“I’ve run this bill the whole time I've been in the House ... and have spent hours and hours talking to not just one set of stakeholders, but also the children who were child actors and who are affected by this,” she said. “So I would have loved to have been involved with this.”
Gutierrez told us neither Google nor Willoughby looped her in on the bill. But Willoughby said she didn’t know about Gutierrez’s past years of legislation.
“I wasn't aware that (Gutierrez) had worked on anything in that arena until she made the announcement from the floor,” Willoughby told us. “Otherwise, I don't mind working with other individuals to make sure that legislation is exactly perfect.”
Ultimately, Gutierrez is glad some sort of regulations are advancing, and acknowledged, “This is a job where your ego gets smashed pretty often.“
Easy money: An Attorney General’s Office audit of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program found that more than 20% of purchases analyzed were against the law, Alexandra Hardle of the Arizona Republic reports. In addition, an investigation by Craig Harris of 12News found that Tom Horne’s Department of Education flagged 18,000 parents who misspent $10.3 million in funds on sex products, iPhones, bounce houses and — in one case — a hot tub. Yet, only six were referred for prosecution.
“Well, it’s not fraud. Most of it is just mistakes,” Horne — who has been banned from trading for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission, fined by the Clean Elections Commission for campaign finance violations and was once spotted by the FBI doing a hit and run while having an affair with an employee — told 12News.
The con that never ends: The election-denying supervisors in Cochise County appear to be playing the long game as they try to delay the prosecution of Supervisor Tom Crosby until after the November elections, when Attorney General Kris Mayes is up for re-election, Sasha Hupka reports for Votebeat. In the meantime, they were so inspired by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at the raid of an elections office in Atlanta that they sent her a letter asking her to review the facilities where vote tabulators are tested.
Mayes has troubles of her own: An AG’s Office agent was involved in the fatal shooting of a Mesa woman, 12News’ Haley Williams reports. Police said Dulance Morin was involved, but not exactly how he was involved, in a shooting near his front door that left Maria Lewis dead. The AG’s Office said Morin was placed on administrative leave. On top of that, Vanessa Hickman, a former division chief at the AG’s Office, just pleaded guilty to selling a diamond bracelet that was shipped to her house by mistake last May, KOLD’s Lauren Kobley reports. And William Knuth, an investigator in Mayes’ office who worked on the Crosby case down in Cochise County, resigned after being placed under internal investigation for falsifying timecards and an official police report, Terri Jo Neff reports for the Herald-Review.
Not in our name: A Jewish leader in Arizona is calling out GOP Rep. David Livingston for sponsoring two bills that were written by a Christian nationalist-run organization and would co-opt Judaism to rename the West Bank as “Judea” in state documents, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Civia Tamarkin, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Arizona, called the bills an attempt “to impose their biblical messaging and values” on the state and country.
“This is not something that has been on the agenda of the Jewish community whatsoever,” Tamarkin said. “It certainly is not within the purview of a state legislature to engage in geopolitics.”
So many rate hikes, so little time: Residents in a golf community in Eloy are livid that the state’s Residential Utility Consumer Office won’t take their case against a rate hike that could increase water and waste bills by 150% to 190%, Stacey Barchenger of the Republic reports. The office’s director claimed that it doesn’t have enough capacity and its nine employees are already working on 12 other cases, including one against APS’ rate bump.
In other, other news
Democratic senators sharply criticized a GOP attempt to name State Route 260 after President Donald Trump, noting Trump’s heavy presence in the Epstein files and his history of sexual abuse (Howie Fischer / Capitol Media Services) … Democrats also opposed a measure to create monuments on the Capitol lawn honoring assassinated journalist Don Bolles and assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk yesterday, though the measure still passed the Senate on a party-line vote, minus one Republican (We were watching) … An Arizona State University professor who studies the Middle East and oil markets warns that the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran could result in Arizonans paying more at the pump and for other goods (Kaley O'Kelley / ABC15) … U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, a MAGA Republican and former Navy Seal, cautioned against a regime change war in Iran based on his experiences fighting similar wars in the Middle East (Laura Gersony / Republic) … And ICE agents claim they arrested 23 undocumented immigrants in a Monday raid on a North Phoenix apartment (David Ulloa Jr. / Republic).
Wendy Rogers and other Senate Republicans are trying to do away with photo radar cameras across the state by letting voters decide in November whether they should be allowed — and it seems someone is already helping them out.
Phoenix rolled out its own photo radar system of 17 cameras about a week ago, and the city will start to issue tickets after a month of doling out warnings.
But even if no one’s been given a ticket yet, one camera at 19th Avenue and Thunderbird Road has already been knocked over, Zach Buchanan of the Phoenix New Times reports.
The evidence, which comes from a Reddit post made on Tuesday, shows that the short and flat-to-the-ground cameras looks ridiculously easy to topple.
“These new cameras are so short and ripe for vandalism,” a Reddit user wrote. “The old speed cameras they used to have were on a giant pole.”
A spokesperson from Phoenix’s Street Transportation Department said the cameras are similarly easy to repair, and that the camera in question is already back up and running.
It’s unclear to what degree Phoenix police are investigating the incident — but we’re just wondering, has anyone checked Rogers’ alibi?