{"id":2397757,"date":"2025-02-01T09:50:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T14:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/daughter-of-child-abuser-ruby-franke-warns-against-vlogging\/"},"modified":"2025-02-01T09:53:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T14:53:04","slug":"daughter-of-child-abuser-ruby-franke-warns-against-vlogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/daughter-of-child-abuser-ruby-franke-warns-against-vlogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter Of Child Abuser Ruby Franke Warns Against Vlogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdaughter-of-child-abuser-ruby-franke-warns-against-vlogging%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2397757&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In her\u2063 tell-all book, *The house of My Mother: A Daughter&#8217;s Quest for Freedom*, Shari Franke, the daughter of Ruby Franke, recounts the traumatic impact of growing up in a <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">highly publicized\u2063 family vlogging surroundings<\/a>. \u200bThe Franke family\u200b was well-known for their YouTube \u200cchannel, &#8220;8 Passengers,&#8221; which \u2064showcased their\u2062 life\u200c as a devout Mormon family\u2064 but also hinted at neglect \u2064and abuse. following Ruby&#8217;s arrest and \u200dconviction for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/texas-official-faces-criminal-charge-after-accidentally-shooting-grandson-at-nebraska-wedding\/\" title=\"Texas official charged after accidentally shooting grandson at Nebraska wedding.\">felony child \u2062abuse<\/a> in\u2064 2023, Shari reflects\u200b on her tumultuous relationship with her mother and the psychological, emotional, and physical abuse\u200d stemming from \u2062her mother&#8217;s obsessive pursuit of \u2063fame and profitability through online content.<\/p>\n<p>Shari explains that \u200ctheir\u2062 lives revolved around constant content \u200dcreation, with no\u2062 choice \u2064in the matter, \u2063leading to their\u200d exploitation. Ruby&#8217;s\u2063 monetization strategies blurred the\u2063 line \u2062between family \u200dmoments\u200d and marketable content, compromising the \u2063children&#8217;s privacy and\u200d safety. Shari herself experienced\u2063 exploitation beyond the home due to \u200dthe public\u2062 exposure.<\/p>\n<p>While \u2062Shari protects her younger siblings&#8217; privacy and reaffirms their right to share \u200dtheir stories when they choose, she acknowledges the dangers inherent in \u2064the family vlogging industry. Despite expressing \u200dregret over her involvement in vlogging and the collateral damage of such a\u2062 lifestyle, she plans\u200d to leverage her newfound visibility to advocate for better \u2064protections for children in similar situations. Through her book and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/watch-kjp-snaps-at-reporter-when-asked-if-biden-is-disabled-after-rough-debate-you-know-better\/\" title=\"Watch: KJP Snaps at Reporter When Asked if Biden Is &#039;Disabled&#039; After Rough Debate - &#039;You Know Better!&#039;\">upcoming media appearances<\/a>,\u2063 she hopes to shed light \u200con \u2062the ethical dilemmas \u2062of the family vlogging phenomenon, emphasizing the need for accountability in \u200ca digital landscape that frequently enough prioritizes profit over \u200dthe well-being of children.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In her 21 years on Earth, Shari Franke has hardly known a life without a camera in her face. Her younger siblings, who became the center of one of the most publicized child abuse cases in the country last year, are the same.<\/p>\n<p>All six Franke kids were the stars of the now-deleted popular YouTube vlog &ldquo;8 Passengers.&rdquo; The channel, manned by matriarch Ruby Franke, appeared to show the ins and outs of life as a devoted Mormon family. The daily videos featured hints of neglect and mistreatment, like when Ruby&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3XZS5XuftWc&amp;pp=ygUXcnVieSBmcmFua2Ugc29uIGJlYW5iYWc%3D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">bragged<\/a>&nbsp;about forcing her teenage son to sleep on a beanbag instead of a bed for months. Yet, the channel continually raked in views, likes, comments, and &mdash; most importantly &mdash;subscribers until Ruby was arrested and convicted of felony child abuse in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>In her new tell-all book <em>The House of My Mother: A Daughter&rsquo;s Quest for Freedom<\/em>, Shari refuses to detail the exact horrors her siblings endured in the lead-up to Ruby&rsquo;s imprisonment. Instead, she focuses on her difficult relationship with her mother. Much of the abuse Shari recounts was psychological, emotional, and physical &mdash; fueled by Ruby&rsquo;s commitment to Jodi Hildebrandt&rsquo;s radical parenting advice MLM.<\/p>\n<p>The exploitation that came with vlogging, however, played a key role in the Franke family and Shari&rsquo;s trauma. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Our lives revolved around nonstop content creation &mdash; whether we liked it or not,&rdquo; Shari wrote.<\/p>\n<h2>&lsquo;Commodifying from Cradle to College&rsquo;<\/h2>\n<p>In 2023, I <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/08\/22\/child-actors-shocking-confessions-should-be-a-warning-to-vlog-obsessed-parents-profiting-off-their-kids\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argued<\/a> that children of vlog-obsessed parents would begin coming out of the woodwork with horrific stories of exploitation and abuse for profit, much like the beloved child actors of the &rsquo;90s and 2000s had. After all, the family-vlogging-to-child-abuse-conviction pipeline is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2018\/jul\/19\/youtube-bans-familyofive-pranksters-michael-heather-martin-child-abuse-conviction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">not<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/crime-law\/2019\/11\/13\/popular-youtube-mom-who-was-charged-with-child-abuse-has-died\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">uncommon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Less than a year later, Ruby and her business partner Hildebrandt (who, according to Shari, was also her lesbian lover) were arrested for their pattern of punishing two of Shari&rsquo;s younger siblings with rigorous physical drills for hours in the Utah heat, starvation, and eventually by tying them up with duct tape and rope.<\/p>\n<p>Shari, who largely cut ties with her mother in college, had some idea of the treatment her younger siblings faced based on her own experiences and observations, like when her mother denied some of her siblings Christmas gifts and forced them to watch everyone else open theirs. She even helped collect the evidence that put her mother behind bars.<\/p>\n<p>While she doesn&rsquo;t explicitly say it, one of the first <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/02\/27\/ruby-frankes-first-red-flag-was-deciding-to-pimp-out-her-kids-lives-for-views\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">red flags<\/a> Shari recognized in her mother was when Ruby began filming her children and posting it on the internet.<\/p>\n<p>Ruby&rsquo;s channel started as an easy way to live out her calling as a stay-at-home wife and mom in good standing with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her husband Kevin, who rarely objected to his wife&rsquo;s plots even if they involved inflicting emotional damage on her children, went along with the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;In many ways, family vlogging is a very LDS-aligned pursuit, a natural extension of our traditional practices,&rdquo; Shari explains in the book. &ldquo;Vlogging offers a modern form of bearing testimony and keeping personal and family records, while simultaneously engaging in passive missionary work.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&rsquo;t long, however, before Ruby became a polished professional at &ldquo;blurring the lines between intimate family moments and marketable content.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Ruby might claim her kids were always on board, but the truth is, we never really had a choice in the matter,&rdquo; Shari claims. <\/p>\n<p>Ruby&rsquo;s aggressive attempt to monetize her family meant Shari rarely had a private moment off camera. Her mother had primed her to use every growing pain and milestone as content for the family channel. Eventually, with hopes of building up her bank account, Shari launched her own teen-themed vlog, which she says she regrets.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The worst part? The internet ate it up,&rdquo; Shari writes. &ldquo;Everyone seemed to love what Ruby was posting. Which, of course, encouraged her to post more. She approached YouTube with the dedication of a start-up CEO, putting in long hours, day after day. She had done her homework and knew that in the Wild West of social media, consistency is king, you have to post regularly, which meant every little moment was mined for content. First steps, lost teeth, epic tantrums &mdash; you name it, Ruby filmed it, laser-focused on building her subscriber base, knowing vlogging was a numbers game. And Ruby had always been good with numbers.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Shari wonders early in the book what the &ldquo;lasting repercussions of growing up on camera without any say in the matter&rdquo; look like but later determines that she and her siblings know exactly what the consequences can be.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;In a way, we represented the first true, damning proof of how badly things can go wrong in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/espn-offers-stephen-a-smith-eye-popping-90-million-deal-but-he-wants-mcafee-bucks-report\/\" title=\"ESPN Offers Stephen A. Smith Eye-Popping  Million Deal, But He \u2018Wants McAfee Bucks\u2019: Report\">social media-driven world<\/a> where kids are content and content is king,&rdquo; Shari writes.<\/p>\n<h2>Danger Zone<\/h2>\n<p>The Franke kids&rsquo; daily presence in videos viewed by millions didn&rsquo;t simply sacrifice their privacy on the altar of profit. It also made them vulnerable to exploitation beyond the walls of their mother&rsquo;s home. <\/p>\n<p>In Shari&rsquo;s case, an older married man who befriended her under the guise of an internship was able to further isolate her from her flailing family to coerce sexual favors. His obsession turned into tracking her location and texting her incessantly until a family friend helped her find the courage to cut off the relationship.<\/p>\n<p>Shari openly commits to protecting her younger siblings&rsquo; privacy and safety the best she can amid the media firestorm surrounding Ruby&rsquo;s 2024 sentencing and the case&rsquo;s ongoing presence in the public eye. She took great care throughout her book not to name the younger children who felt the brunt of her mom&rsquo;s criminal behavior and even made a public declaration on her Instagram shortly after its publication that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DEIXj7ytxSM\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&ldquo;this is the end of me sharing my private life.&rdquo;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I knew I had to make a stand, somehow,&rdquo; she writes. &ldquo;Part of that would be saying no to the world&rsquo;s desire for me to talk about my siblings, anywhere. Even in the pages of my own book. It is up to my brothers and sisters if they wish to share their story one day. But I&rsquo;d be no better than Ruby if I detailed their experiences without their consent. They deserve to be given back the choice that had been stolen from them for so long.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Like a cruel joke, however, justice for the Franke kids came with cameras, something Shari spent paragraphs lamenting. <\/p>\n<p>Since the spotlight appears to be inevitable, Shari plans to use it to her advantage. In addition to penning her book and testifying in front of legislators, Shari is slated to appear alongside her brother Chad and father in the Hulu documentary <a href=\"https:\/\/press.hulu.com\/shows\/devil-in-the-family-the-fall-of-ruby-franke\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&ldquo;Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.&rdquo;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Franke saga should be a canary in the coal mine for the family vlogging industry. Shari knows, however, that the vicious cycle that comes with videoing and publishing every moment of a child&rsquo;s life, with all of its proven ethical and economic pitfalls, will inevitably continue as long as there is an audience for it.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;For content creators, news outlets, and true-crime documentarians alike, the rewards of this emotional economy can be seductive. And the digital and media landscape remains vast and full of promise &mdash; but it is also a wilderness, and I fear we have lost our way,&rdquo; Shari warns.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shari Franke, 21, has lived her life in front of cameras<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":490,"featured_media":2397758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[39057,35390,17459,49634,49635],"class_list":["post-2397757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-child-abuse","tag-mental-health","tag-parenting","tag-ruby-franke","tag-vlogging"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2397766,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397757\/revisions\/2397766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2397758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}