A new California law lets children of family vloggers make their parents take down all footage of them

A new California law will protect the children of family vloggers once they turn 18.

Senate Bill No. 1247 gives adults whose parents, legal guardians, or family members used them in social media content while they were minors the right to demand removal of said content.

Once served a notice of removal, parents/guardians/etc have 10 days to take down violative content or edit it to remove the requester’s appearances. If those 10 days pass and the content is still up, vloggers will face penalties of $3,000 per day moving forward, plus further potential damages, injunctive relief, and attorney’s fees.

Now, to be clear, this law won’t let someone take their mom to court for posting Facebook pictures of them in an embarrassing Halloween costume (though we do think parents should more carefully consider what they post about their kid online, especially in the age of AI).

S.B. 1247 has a couple requirements that tune it to specifically target professional family vloggers.

• First and most pertinent, vloggers have to have made money off the content involving their kid. If someone posted pictures or videos but made zero revenue, including any ad revenue, their content doesn’t come under the scope of this law. Conversely, vloggers who earned ad revenue, took brand deals, accepted tips through things like Super Chat, or sold merch based on their social presence are all now open to removal requests.
• Second, occasional appearances in a parent’s content–even if they did make money off it–don’t count. A minor must have appeared in at least 30% of the vlogger’s content to qualify for removal request.
• Third, this law explicitly applies to a minor’s own parents, legal guardians, or family members. It would not protect a kid who, for example, went to school with a family vlogger’s child, went to their birthday party, and ended up in a vlog posted to YouTube.

We’re guessing it could potentially apply if a parent signed a financial agreement with a family vlogger to have their kid appear in the family’s content on a regular basis, but that circumstance isn’t accounted for in S.B. 1247’s current form.

The law will also lay a mandate on social media platforms: Once it kicks in, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and all other sites “shall provide a clear and conspicuous mechanism by which a child influencer can request a vlogger” remove content featuring them, according to the bill’s text. If a platform doesn’t have a built-in mechanism, it has to be responsible for receiving removal requests, and is required to forward those requests to vloggers within three days of receipt.

Vloggers who receive removal requests and comply with them will not face any consequences. It’s only if they refuse removal or if removal takes longer than 10 days that they open themselves up to further legal action.

This law kicks in in January 2027–and while it’s only a California law, we do expect other states might enact similar protections. YouTube just turned 20 years old, so the vlogging industry has now been around long enough that thousands of kids whose parents once featured them in videos are turning 18 and gaining control over their own lives. S.B. 1247 makes sure that control is retroactive, too.

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