#not just arguably but definitly much worse for vlogged children

[slogthor]

Additionally children in social media are not actors and not protected under Coogan’s law (Jackie Coogan was a child actor who’s parents spent the millions he made before adulthood, now 15% of child actors’ earnings must be put in a protected trust)

There’s a bill in Washington state to provide children vloggers and influencers with protections and another in California but the CA one would only apply to videos over an hour long and the WA is broader. Corn Kid is his family’s breadwinner and doing sponsorship and advertisement deals. I’m not saying he specifically is being exploited or abused it’s just a current example but any kid in his position deserves legal protection.

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"