Ruby Franke’s eldest daughter, who hails from a controversial parenting blog in Utah, is spearheading a new initiative aimed at protecting children through a new child actor law in her state.

Utah’s Governor, Spencer Cox, has officially signed the legislation, HB322, that Shari Franke actively supported. This bill offers specific payment and privacy safeguards for minors engaged in entertainment, whether it be traditional acting like TV commercials or performing in social media content.

“I have been involved in drafting HB322 to safeguard child influencers in our state,” Shari Franke shared on Instagram in February. “This legislation would mandate parents to establish a trust fund for their children and ensure they receive a minimum payment. Moreover, it would allow child influencers, upon reaching 18, to have any content involving them removed from all social media platforms.”

Shari added that certain family bloggers and lobbyists in Utah are against the legislation, but wrote that “[i]f family vlogging is as good as ‘ethical’ family vloggers want you to think, they should not fear being mandated to pay their children (because they say the children are already being paid anyway).”

Prior to ConneXions, Ruby Franke ran a parenting vlog, or video blog, called 8Passengers, centered around her own family of six children and two parents. But the 8Passengers empire came crumbling down once users started to notice Franke’s unusual behavior and punishments for her children. Ruby Franke stopped posting to the 8Passengers YouTube channel after her last video was uploaded on June 5, 2019. 

In earlier videos without Hildebrandt, Franke complained about her children’s school using TikTok to teach dances, the dangers of sleepovers, bullying, and other topics. Some of her videos included her husband, including a “live couples workshop” about managing finances. (YouTube/ ConneXions)

Fox News is not aware of any evidence that Ruby Franke or anyone associated with 8Passengers engaged in any illegal conduct during the period she was actively vlogging on the 8Passengers YouTube channel.

Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve up to 30 years in prison.

Shari also wrote a memoir titled “The House of My Mother,” in which she explains how she and her siblings were listed as 8Passengers LLC’s “employees.”

Shari Franke explained how she tried for years to get the Department of Family and Child Services to take action against her mother in her memoir. (Hulu)

In dozens of YouTube videos and social media posts, Franke and Hildebrandt coached parents in calm voices from a living room couch on how to raise their children in “truth.” In a video posted just before their arrests, Hildebrandt said pain can be a good thing for children of a certain age.

The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person’s or family’s reality, as well as children’s rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.