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Illinois set to define using your kids in social media videos as child labor (ilga.gov)
17 points by Kon-Peki on May 18, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments



Summary of the law:

> Amends the Child Labor Law. Provides that upon reaching the age of majority, any individual who was a minor engaged in the work of vlogging may request the permanent deletion of any video segment including the likeness, name, or photograph of the individual from any online platform that provided compensation to the individual's parent or parents in exchange for that video content. Provides that a vlogger who features a minor child in a specified amount of the volgger's content shared on an online platform must set aside a specified amount of gross earnings on the video content in a trust account to be preserved for the benefit of the minor upon reaching the age of majority. Provides for the requirements of the trust account. Defines terms.

Seems like an excellent idea to me. I fully support this and hope it becomes federal law one day.


So any video that pans across a child can be forced off the internet at the will of the child?

That’s genuinely absurd, and almost certainly unconstitutional.


It's already codified for adults:

https://laws101.com/recording-me-without-my-permission/#:~:t....

Big divide in liability between public and private spaces though.


> So any video that pans across a child can be forced off the internet at the will of the child?

No, at the will of the adult who was captured on video as a child, and only if the video was monetized. It's not absurd, this is a good law with only positive externalities.


good.


Why?


Because children are under the control of their parents and can't consent to thousands/millions of adults watching them.

This is no different than regulations around child actors, which are widely considered good and necessary protections of vulnerable children.


Yes, but their parents can consent for them. This argument is weirdly circular.


> Yes, but their parents can consent for them.

The point is that there are some things so risky for kids that parents shouldn't be able to "consent for them". One of those things is child labor.

> This argument is weirdly circular.

Circular doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.

Parents have control over their children, but society has put boundaries on what they can do to them because parents are capable of great harm. There's nothing circular about that.


“Mommy vlogging” as it’s been called, is disgusting but openly accepted child exploitation across YouTube and TikTok.

Especially the cases where the children are obvious victims of abuse. Some people literally use (and treat) their children as props, for internet points.


They're literally child actors. It is child labor.

It's regularly exploitative and should be under at least the same laws as child actors are under, with all the protections in place that child actors have for the money they earn, etc.

And while we're at it, we should probably re-evaluate child actor laws to make sure they're sufficiently protected from the bad actor and actor strategies that have evolved since the original child actor laws have gone through.


Because it is child labor.


How so? Someone recording you seemed utterly unlike being in a coal mine.


Ah yes, as well all know labor is exclusively equivalent to working in coal mines.


The entire point of child labor laws was to get kids out of dangerous situations like working in coal mines. Being recorded isn’t labor, isn’t dangerous. Isn’t negative at all.


> Being recorded isn’t labor, isn’t dangerous. Isn’t negative at all.

Tell that to Brooke Shields and many other children who were sexualized on camera with the consent of their parents and still have psychological damage.

There have also been parents who literally tortured their children on YouTube for laughs[1].

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/child-abuse-charges-aga...


Until some 7-yr-old's munchausen-by-proxy mom puts him on puberty blockers for social media updoots.


Seems like the other thing is the issue here.


The title was "Illinois set to define using your kids in social media videos as child labor", not "Illinois set to define using your kids in social media videos as coal mining."



In this comment, the goal post has been moved from "child labor" to "working in a coal mine as a child".

Certainly working in a coal mine is worse, but they are both child labor.




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