Latest news with #TiffanySmith
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Yahoo
Atlanta moms channel grief into support for others on Mother's Day
While Mother's Day is typically filled with joy and celebration, for many mothers across metro Atlanta, the day can also be a painful reminder of loss. Two local mothers who know that pain firsthand are working to offer support and solidarity to others walking the same difficult path. Tiffany Smith, founder of The Angel Moms Collective, and Ashley McKenzie Smith, founder of Say Their Name Monuments, have turned personal tragedy into purposeful community building. Tiffany Smith's 15-year-old son, Cameron Jackson, was killed during a mass shooting near Atlantic Station in November 2022. 'It was devastating,' she said. 'It's like your lights just go out. You leave your body. You go numb.' [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] After struggling to find a space for grieving mothers, Smith launched The Angel Moms Collective in 2023 to provide support and empowerment for women navigating unimaginable loss. 'What I realized going through that journey was there really wasn't a space to empower moms through the grief journey, and there were a lot of moms who were walking in silence,' she said. 'The connection with another mom who understands your journey, we also do online grief circles, so it's a space where you can share your story and know that it's OK.' One of the moms who found comfort in that space is Ashley McKenzie Smith, whose 20-year-old son, Jaylin McKenzie, was shot and killed by police in Memphis during a traffic stop in December 2022. 'I was really expecting him to be home for Christmas, and he didn't make it,' McKenzie Smith said. 'There's nothing like being supported or someone else understanding what you're dealing with as you're trying to figure out what happened or just as you deal with death.' McKenzie Smith went on to create Say Their Name Monuments, which focuses on justice advocacy and remembrance for families affected by police violence. 'Tiffany is more of the grief side, which is a great partnership,' she said. 'We do more education and remembering.' Together, the two mothers are not only honoring their sons' lives but helping others find strength in their own grief. 'The new meaning that Mother's Day has taken on for me is legacy,' Tiffany Smith said. 'Creating legacy—not only for Cameron, but for myself, my other children, and my community.' The next virtual grief support group hosted by The Angel Moms Collective is scheduled for May 22 at 7 pm. People can sign up on their website. The organizations are also planning a community event for Juneteenth. TRENDING STORIES: 1 dead after multi-vehicle crash on I-285 Ground stop lifted at Atlanta airport due to 'runway equipment' outage, ground delay in place Murder case of DeKalb man found shot to death in front seat of car remains unsolved [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Family-Vlogger Documentary Trend Magnifies a Serious Societal Problem
Recent documentaries like Hulu's Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke and Netflix's Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing should have society — or at least social media — shook. Both projects shine a spotlight on abuses of minors in the hugely popular family-vlogging space. Behind the shiny-happy presentation of children, tweens and teens is a mostly-unregulated environment that can bend (if not completely breaks) child labor laws, enable online predators and create unknown damage to the psyche of developing brains. Instagram and YouTube are where most of these parents offend, two activists featured in Bad Influence, which examines troubling behind-the-scenes behavior of adults involved with Piper Rockelle's popular YouTube channel, mainly her 'momager' Tiffany Smith, told The Hollywood Reporter. Though YouTube gets the most play in the documentaries (and for good reason: the 20-year-old site with 20 billion videos gets the largest share of TV viewership of any media company, including Disney), Instagram may be the more potentially-dangerous platform, both experts said, as it allows an account's followers to pay for walled content — with some restrictions. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Hazbin Hotel' Offshoot 'Helluva Boss' Gets Prime Video Run, Two-Season Renewal $8.9B in YouTube Ads Help Power Alphabet to Hugely Profitable Quarter On YouTube's 20th Anniversary, the Platform Says Over 20 Billion Videos Have Been Uploaded Chris McCarty, the founder of Quit Clicking Kids, said it is 'particularly concerning when you have exclusive content of kids that is behind a paywall — the implications of that are pretty serious.' In a separate conversation with THR, Sarah Adams, the founder of Kids Are Not Content who goes by on social media, called Instagram 'particularly bad because … there's a lot of predators on there.' Meta, the parent company of Instagram, says it takes child safety very seriously, and has also been improving safeguards already in place. A policy implemented in April 2024 made it so that Instagram accounts run by adults that 'primarily post content of children' cannot offer subscriptions, receive gifts or receive badges (both are Instagram currency), a spokesperson told THR. Users as young as 13 can create their own accounts, but minor-created accounts have never had a monetization option available to them. Children under 13 are allowed to have a 'presence' on Instagram, but the account must be 'actively managed by a parent or manager, who is responsible for the account's content, privacy settings and interactions with others.' Instagram uses 'technology to prevent potentially suspicious adults from interacting with teen accounts, and with accounts that predominantly feature minors,' the company said. From just October-December 2024, Instagram removed two million pieces of child-exploitation content from Instagram, over 99 percent of which was found proactively before being reported. The platform's introduction of 'Teen Accounts' in September 2024 added more privacy and messaging restrictions, the spokesperson said. (Anyone under 18 is automatically enrolled in a Teen Account, though 16- and 17-year-olds can then opt out; kids under 16 need a parent's permission to opt out of a Teen Account.) Like Instagram, 13-year-olds can set up their own YouTube channel; children under 13 can have a 'supervised' channel linked to a parent's channel. Unlike Instagram, there are no paywalls on YouTube channels. 'We want creators to have fun and be creative, but they must also follow our Community Guidelines, Creator Responsibility policies and applicable laws,' YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle told THR. 'If we see that a creator's on- and/or off-platform behavior is harmful to the wider YouTube community we take swift action.' Swift action here included a 2022 indefinite suspension of monetization on Piper Rockelle's channel for off-platform behavior. And in August 2023, the month Franke was arrested (and later pled guilty to) child abuse charges, YouTube terminated two channels linked to her. 'YouTube developed a set of quality principles to help guide YouTube's kids and family creators,' Bullwinkle continued. 'These principles were developed in partnership with child development specialists, and are based on extensive research.' McCarty's and Adams' respective websites are considered sister sites in the fight against the exploitation of children on social media. They share a similar cause — one we should all share, frankly — but approach the problem differently. McCarty, a 20-year-old Political Science and Chinese double-major honors student at the University of Washington (Seattle), became appalled by the lack of accountability in the space after reading about Myka and James Stauffer, married midwest family vloggers who shared the process of adopting a two-year-old special needs child from China with their substantial YouTube audience. Two-and-a-half years later, they essentially gave the child back, citing an inability to meet all of his needs. The swift online backlash is chronicled in HBO documentary series An Update on Our Family. Then 17, McCarty began cold-calling and cold-emailing Washington state legislators, pushing a homemade policy to combat such exploitative 'sharenting' (a term first coined in the Wall Street Journal in 2010). LOL, teenagers, right? Except this teenager's optimism and passion (mixed with, yes, some healthy naiveté) worked. 'I wasn't expecting anyone to take me up on that,' McCarty said, 'but they did!' Though McCarty's bill was first introduced in Washington state (as HB 2032), it was first picked up in Illinois (SB 1782), where it received bipartisan, unanimous support. Other states (and that bipartisan, unanimous support) followed, including California (SB764), arguably the most important state for all of this. McCarty's lobbying efforts there coincided with the release of the Demi Lovato cautionary-documentary Child Star, which featured McCarty. 'I don't know how the universe worked out that way, but it did,' McCarty said. 'There's this really great photo of [Lovato] being there at the bill-signing with Gov. Gavin Newsom. It was really a satisfying moment to look at that and think, 'Oh, I helped put those two people together in that room.'' McCarty's bill has two primary components: 1) It ensures a percentage of revenue (at least 15 percent, similar to Hollywood's Coogan Law) earned from a minor's participation in social-media videos is set aside for them, and 2) It allows the child performer to request the deletion of content featuring them as a minor when they come of age. As kids, 'they couldn't consent to it,' McCarty argues. Most — but not all — local lawmakers agree on that second piece. Even if YouTube already does. 'YouTube has supported efforts to compensate kids who appear in YouTube content and provide a pathway to remove content made when they were a minor (YouTube already does this voluntarily),' Bullwinkle said. Don't freak out on us here, normal parents who share normal stuff about their kids in a normal way on social media: McCarty's bill only applies to accounts where a minor is featured in 30 percent of the posted videos within the past 30 days and those videos are generating at least 10 cents in revenue per view. As cute as your kids are in their Christmas morning videos, they're probably not get-you-paid cute. McCarty's bill is a great start, but it cannot completely protect kids from parental exploitation in the space. What it can do those is enforce protections on the components of sharenting that are measurable. The government is very interested in how much income one brings in (Meta and YouTube-parent Alphabet are publicly-traded companies; they'll comply), and it is also not debatable as to when a child becomes an adult — 18, in most countries. Unfortunately, unlike a film and TV set, that's about where the protections for vlogging must feasibly end. (Not that protections for children on film and TV sets have been perfected: ID's Quiet on Set showed us that there is still a lot of room for improvement even within the Hollywood studio system.) McCarty wishes the bill could 'require set teachers or regulated work hours,' but neither McCarty or Adams see how that can be enforced when the filming in question is done among family, by family and often within the family home. 'I think it would be very difficult to get into the homes and monitor how much these kids are working,' Adams, said. 'Some [family vloggers] would argue that [the kids] are not working — they're just filming their life.' And that argument would be nonsense in the cases we're discussing: scaled-up, monetized family vlogs. 'Trust me, these kids are acting. They know when the camera is on that they have to perform, they have to say something cute. Who knows what that's doing to their psyche as they develop a sense of self and always have to feel like they're in performance mode?' Adams said. 'But when it comes to regulating, like the labor kids, or like the schooling hours, I think it would be extremely difficult on a state or federal level.' So instead, Adams, 39, is more interested in shifting the culture of sharenting than the laws against it. Her approach is a pragmatic one (perhaps that comes to us all with age, for better or for worse). 'If I can help parents look through a different lens at this — in the way they share their kids, in the way they consume content online — then that's what I can offer,' she said. Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Kids, Inc.
The scenes leave a pit in your stomach. In Netflix's 'Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing,' two early teenagers are pressured to kiss by adults — a parent and a videographer — on camera. Hulu's 'The Devil in the Family: The Ruby Franke Story' shows the dramatic footage of Franke's 12-year-old son showing up at a neighbor's door with duct tape markings around his ankle, asking them to call police. The pair of documentaries, released this year, shine a light on the perils of child-centered online content. 'Bad Influence' examines claims of abuse and exploitation made by 11 former members of the teen YouTube collective 'The Squad' against Tiffany Smith — who ran the YouTube channel, which drew two million subscribers — and her former boyfriend Hunter Hill. Both denied the allegations, and the suit was settled for a reported $1.85 million last year. Ruby Franke, a mother of six, pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in 2023 after denying her children adequate food and water and isolating them as she built a family YouTube channel that amassed nearly 2.5 million subscribers before it was taken down. She will serve up to 30 years in prison. Concerns about the treatment of child entertainers have abounded since the days of Judy Garland and through last year's 'Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,' in which former Nickelodeon actors described performing under harmful and sexually inappropriate conditions. Less examined is the working world of child influencers, who are now speaking out about the harsh, unsafe or emotionally taxing constraints of being broadcast by their parents. Viewers may be tempted to ask, 'Aren't there laws against this?' 'We have pretty documented evidence of the troubling pipeline for Hollywood and child actors, but we don't have nearly similar numbers for child influencers, primarily because the phenomenon of influencing is so young,' said Chris McCarty, the founder and executive director of Quit Clicking Kids, an organization dedicated to stopping the monetization of minors. 'A lot of the kids are too young to even really fully understand what's going on, let alone, like, actually speak out about their experiences.' Child entertainer laws — which in some cases make provisions for minors' education, set limits on working hours and stipulate that earnings be placed in a trust — regulate theatrical industries. The world of content creators, where an account with a sizable following can generate millions of dollars a year for creators, is largely unregulated. McCarty worked with the California legislature to draft an amendment to the Coogan Law, legislation passed in 1939 that requires employers to set aside 15 percent of a child actor's earnings in a trust. In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed Senate Bill 764, mandating that creators who feature children in 30 percent or more of their content set aside a proportioned percentage of their earnings into a trust for the child to access when they turn 18. The law went into effect this year and made California the third state (along with Illinois and Minnesota) to adopt financial protections for children featured in social media content. Some notable family vloggers uprooted from California for Tennessee in the immediate aftermath. The LaBrant family, whose YouTube (12.8 million subscribers) and TikTok content (the mother, Savannah, has 30.3 million followers) mainly revolves around their five young children, explained their move to Nashville in a post, saying 'We truly feel like this is where God is calling our family.' Brittany Xavier, a prominent TikTok creator with over 3 million followers whose content mostly showcases her three children, attributed her move to Nashville to finding mold in her family's California rental house. They did not respond to requests for comment, nor did they cite the new law as the reason for their departures, but commenters on their videos and on Reddit have speculated about whether the new legislation contributed to their moves. The amendment to the Coogan Law could be a starting point to more regulation. 'The law can also be expanded to make sure that kids have boundaries on their working hours and protections in terms of being guaranteed education,' said Mary Jean Amon, an assistant professor at Indiana University who specializes in research on parental sharing and beliefs about autonomy and consent. That might prove difficult given the lack of boundaries between work and home for child influencers. In 'The Devil in the Family,' the Franke children protested rarely having any time off from making content — outtakes from their vlogs showed one of the family's sons, Chad, who is now 20, being told to answer with more enthusiasm when he was tired and didn't want to be on camera. 'It felt more like a set than a house,' Shari Franke, 22, says in one scene in the documentary. 'For kid influencers, those cameras are ubiquitous since most of the adults around them will have one in hand at virtually all times,' Amon said. 'Rather than playing characters, child influencers are observed as themselves, while also being heavily rewarded for pandering to the desires of strangers, and sometimes they're punished for failing to do so.' Those follower-strangers represent a danger far more difficult to address. Deja Smith, a stay-at-home mother from the Houston area, creates lifestyle videos for Instagram and TikTok, where she has a following of about 140,000. She shared details and images of her newborn daughter for most of the first year of her life until strangers started recognizing her child in public and leaving upsetting comments on social media. After reading more about the ways users can manipulate children's images through artificial intelligence and search for personal information like an address through photos, she wiped images of her daughter from the internet altogether. 'I honestly feel uncomfortable watching other family vloggers' accounts that are centered around their kid,' Smith said. 'I'm not interested, and I block because I don't want to be a part of that or supporting that kind of content.'
Express Tribune
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Netflix's new ‘Bad Influence' docuseries chronicles Piper Rockelle's story to expose dark side of child vlogging
Netflix's highly anticipated docuseries Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing premieres Wednesday, April 9, shedding light on the troubling reality behind child influencer culture. Centred on YouTube star Piper Rockelle and her mother Tiffany Smith, the three-part series explores allegations of exploitation, manipulation, and abuse within the world of online fame. The series delves into the rise and fallout of Rockelle's popular YouTube channel, which gained massive traction through prank videos, relationship-themed content, and group challenges featuring a rotating cast of young aspiring influencers known as 'The Squad.' At the height of its popularity, the channel generated significant revenue—reportedly over $500,000 per month. Behind the scenes, however, disturbing allegations surfaced. Tiffany Smith, Rockelle's mother and manager, was accused by multiple former Squad members of physical and emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and exploitation. Eleven individuals, many of whom were minors at the time, filed a lawsuit in January 2022, claiming Smith had subjected them to inappropriate behaviour and failed to compensate them for their appearances on the channel. After a years-long legal battle, the case was settled in October 2024 for $1.85 million. In the wake of the scandal, YouTube demonetised Rockelle's channel in February 2022, stripping the family of its ad revenue. Bad Influence features firsthand accounts from the affected teens and their families, offering a rare glimpse into the pressures and consequences of child stardom in the digital age. Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing premieres globally on Netflix on April 9.
USA Today
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
When does 'Bad Influence' come out? Premiere date, trailer, episodes for docuseries
When does 'Bad Influence' come out? Premiere date, trailer, episodes for docuseries Show Caption Hide Caption What the emojis in Netflix's 'Adolescence' mean Since its release, Netflix's 'Adolescence' has sparked widespread discussion, offering a chilling look at the impact of the internet and social media on children. unbranded - Entertainment The scandal surrounding the family of teen YouTube star Piper Rockelle are the focus of "Bad Influence," a new Netflix docuseries that explores the perils of child vlogging. The three-part docuseries, which premieres this week, offers an inside look at the "disturbing stories of alleged exploitation, cult-like manipulation, and abuse" Rockelle's former costars endured at the hands of her "momager" Tiffany Smith, according to Netflix's Tudum. Rockelle is a vlogger who rose to internet stardom by staging elaborate pranks, competing in absurd challenges, and making soapy 'crush content" with a group of aspiring child stars known as "The Squad" on YouTube. Smith was accused of abuse and exploitation and was sued by nearly a dozen teenagers who were regularly featured on her daughter's YouTube channel in January 2022, NBC News reported. The parties reached a $1.85 million settlement agreement in October 2024. "Through their stories, (Bad Influence) exposes the dark realities of social media fame and the fight to protect the next generation of creators from exploitation," according to Netflix. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. Here's what to know about new Netflix docuseries "Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing," including additional details about Piper Rockelle's mother, Tiffany Smith. Who is Tiffany Smith? Tiffany Smith is Piper Rockelle's mom and business manager. Smith and her boyfriend Hunter Hill helped Piper film and produce short-form content for YouTube and other social media platforms. "As she continued to post online, Piper amassed millions of followers along with a lot of revenue — at one point, reportedly upwards of over half a million dollars per month — in the form of brand deals and other income streams," according to Tudum. Smith began to invite a number of aspiring influencers to join her daughter in front of the camera. The rotating cast of tween friends Smith enlisted in 2018 to appear in her daughter's videos were known as "The Squad." The group would create content together and promote each other's work on social media. Some of them even moved in with Smith and her daughter. The parents of some of the members of "The Squad" and even members of "The Squad" themselves eventually grew concerned about Smith's questionable behavior on and off camera, according to Tudum. Eleven Squad members accused Smith of inappropriate behavior and later sued the momager as a result of physical and emotional injuries they endured from 'harassment, molestation, and abuse," NBC News reported. Some of the teens alleged that they were not compensated for their work, appearances and likeness. The years-long case came to a close in October 2024 with a $1.85 million settlement agreement, according to NBC News. YouTube demonetized Rockelle's channel in February 2022, which means neither Smith nor her daughter can make money from ads featured in videos. Rockelle, now 18, continues to post regularly on social media. What is 'Bad Influence' about? "Bad Influence" is a three-part docuseries that "explores the shadowy world of child influencers," specifically surrounding the abuse allegations made against Tiffany Smith, the mother of popular YouTube vlogger Piper Rockelle. Here's what to know: What is the Natalia Grace Barnett case, the subject of Hulu show 'Good American Family?' When does 'Bad Influence' premiere? "Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing" premieres Wednesday, April 9 on Netflix. Watch the 'Bad Influence' trailer
