The Dark Side of Family Vlogging
Clicks, cash and backlash … We'll also bribe her to go away … And Tom Horne is still a disaster.
The morbidly fascinating saga of family vlogging accounts has made its way to Arizona’s Legislature.
The self-made media has been around for a while, and some of the biggest family vloggers have amassed millions of followers by uploading videos of their day-to-day lives.
Viewers devour the ordinary content1 of Mom making breakfast, the youngest son getting his tonsils out, the eldest daughter going to prom. It’s virtual escapism at its finest because it feels real.
And the payouts from revenue sharing on platforms like YouTube and sponsored social media posts can be unreal. A recent study found the influencer marketing economy grew to almost $13.8 billion in 2021, and those posts from social media stars telling you to buy a product can earn $10,000 to $20,000.
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But when parents capitalize off of posting videos of their kids, it’s the parents who decide what to do with the money.
Rep. Nancy Gutierrez’s HB2565 would require vloggers to compensate minors if at least 30% of their monetized content includes the name, likeness or photograph of their child. Guardians would have to set aside 10% in a trust for the child to be released when they turn 18.
When minors come of age, they can also request all money-generating content of them to be wiped from the internet, the bill says, and the internet platform “must take all reasonable steps to permanently delete the video.”
“Kids don't necessarily have that say, and so at the very least, they should be compensated for a vlog that goes viral,” Gutierrez said. “And the parents, you know, making a lot of money — it's great for the family, but the children who are earning that income should have that income saved for them.”
Opinions are turning on the potential for abuse as voyeuristic viewers line a family's pockets when their content becomes more salacious. One “momfluencer” faced internet cancellation after telling her kid to cry on camera because the family dog was sick. Another YouTube family pulled vicious “pranks” on their son to solicit his distress — like making the son slap their daughter — and eventually lost custody.
YouTube mom Ruby Franke was recently charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse after her 12-year-old son fled to a neighbor’s house with open wounds, visibly malnourished. Another 10-year-old daughter was found in a similar condition, and internet sleuths pointed to Franke’s YouTube content of unorthodox punishments, including withholding food or “bed privileges” for her kids.
Yes, these stomach-churning events happen without a camera documenting them. But for family vloggers, the temptation to up the ante for clickbait can take a turn for the worse in the name of the online currency of views.
While the troubling examples have poked holes in the wholesome narratives of family vloggers, the issue Gutierrez’s bill addresses doesn’t hinge on the type of content family vloggers post, but on whether they fairly compensate their children for generating income for them.
Last year, Illinois became the first state to pass legislation2 requiring influencer parents to give a percentage of earnings to their children. Ohio’s working on getting a similar law passed this year. Disney child actor Alyson Stoner joined a press conference there to explain that after working on 200 films and projects as a minor, she had nothing in her bank account when she turned 18.
“Damage and harm have already taken place and the issue will only continue to blossom. It’s worth getting ahead before we watch a new form of child exploitation take place on our phones,” Stoner said.
We reached out to a handful of Arizona’s family vloggers to gauge their takes on the proposed legislation, but none replied immediately on Monday. What we did learn, however, is there are a considerable number of YouTube families raking in dollars in Arizona.
Gutierrez doesn’t know if her bill will make it to a committee to inch its way through the bill-to-law process, but at the very least, it’ll open up a discussion for the state.
“Really, by introducing legislation, that's how we start these conversations,” she said.
Suspicious timing: Ahead of the AZGOP reorganization meeting this weekend, MAGA bullshit artist and talk show host Garrett Lewis claimed to have solved the mystery of Kari Lake’s claim that someone attempted to bribe her to get out of politics last year: It was AZGOP Chair Jeff DeWit, Lewis claims. Republican activists want DeWit to resign ahead of the meeting and Trump rally/AZGOP annual meeting this weekend.
“This guy, I think, is a hardcore plant,” Lewis declared.
Making good time: Volunteers for the ballot initiative to enshrine reproductive rights in the Arizona Constitution have gathered 250,000 signatures toward their goal of more than 800,000 before July to put the question on the ballot this November, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux. The minimum number of valid signatures from Arizona voters to qualify for the ballot is just 384,000.
Arizona has the most beautiful sunsets: After attempting to block almost all of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ department directors from being confirmed, legislative Republicans are now trying to further restrict her executive authority by holding important departments hostage to legislative audits and the obscure continuation and sunset review process, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports.
Scary times: Secretary of State Adrian Fontes teed off on the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for not prosecuting election official intimidation cases as “domestic terrorism.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said if cops or prosecutors were facing these kinds of threats, the DOJ would be all over it. And after Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen got a shout-out in a Federalist article declaring she joined a “left-wing alliance” trying to “meddle” in elections, the Sun’s Adrian Skabelund explains the whole controversy surrounding the latest iteration of “Zuckbucks.”
“I think they’re more worried about their appropriations than they are about keeping the peace and preserving our democracy,” Fontes said of the DOJ.
But we already paid with taxes: The Flagstaff City Council is considering taking advantage of a new state law allowing police departments to jack up the price of body camera footage to include not only the price of the disc police save the file on, but also $46 per hour for an employee’s time to redact and prepare the footage, the Daily Sun’s Adrian Skabelund reports.
Spend it on a subscription instead: The $100 price of admission to see Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega’s State of the City address has Scottsdale politicos grumbling about the good old days when it was free to watch, and only $50 if you wanted breakfast, too, Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon reports. The speech will be streamed for free.
“Covering costs associated with any event may seem high, but food, service, audio-visual are also expensive,” Ortega said.
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The Airbnb lobby is strong: A Gila County supervisor “got hammered really hard” by local Airbnb and is considering revising a newly passed short-term rental ordinance, which includes a $250 annual fee and noise and occupancy restrictions, to appease the angry Airbnb owners, Peter Aleshire reports for the Payson Roundup.
Thank a journalist: After reading Andrew Ford’s horror stories in the Republic last year about buried cases of medial malpractice, Democratic Rep. Patty Contreras wants to ensure patients can see doctors’ record of complaints and discipline. Her House Bill 2312 would require the Arizona Medical Board to post discipline records and advisory letters against doctors online, Ford writes. He previously created a tool to look up your doctor’s record.
The Joint Legislative Budget Committee released its monthly fiscal highlights yesterday showing the state’s budget hole keeps getting deeper.
The Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small breaks down the big picture: December revenues were $75 million below expectations after both individual and corporate income taxes tanked in December compared to the previous year (thanks, former Gov. Doug Ducey’s flat tax plan!).
But if you really want to get lost in the financial weeds of state government, scroll down to the final pages, which are full of fascinating nuggets, like that nearly half of ESA recipients in grades 1-12 are now public school transfers, as opposed to 21% last year.
As expected, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s hotline to net complaints about all the woke lessons teachers are teaching so he could discipline them is a total disaster.
But you really should read Nick Sullivan’s story about it in the Republic because the details are just hilarious. Every sentence is more outrageous than the previous, but here are the highlights:
In 10 months, the hotline has received “about two dozen” legitimate complaints and more than 30,000 prank calls. Most of those legitimate complaints weren’t about woke teaching.
Horne doesn’t have a system for tracking outcomes from investigations.
The office claims it isn’t even responsible for investigating complaints despite funding a $70,000 to $80,000 hotline investigator position. (The investigator they hired quit.)
Schools are supposed to investigate alleged problems, but none had heard about the complaints from Horne’s office.
The Catalina Foothills Unified School District learned about a complaint against it when Horne announced it at a press conference. The superintendent emailed Horne’s office, which apologized and now says the allegations were “either resolved or nonexistent.”
Both Nicole and Hank have been guilty of going down the rabbit hole of mundane family vlogging content at times.
In case you think your voice doesn’t matter: The law was spurred by Shreya Nallamothu, who was a high school junior when she reached out to a state senator after documenting cases of child exploitation on social media for a school report.
I cannot imagine anything more boring than watching some family make breakfast and go through its day. People watching this really need to get a life.
Get Kelli Ward off that boat and back in charge of the AZGOP! We (Democrats) want to win in 2024!