Mum started ‘cult-like’ kidfluencer group ‘The Squad’ and ‘sent tween daughter’s underwear to men’
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In 2022, a group of young actors once known as ‘The Squad’ filed a lawsuit against YouTube influencer Piper Rockelle’s mum, Tiffany Smith.
Accused of abusing them, it was claimed she sent out her tween ‘daughter’s underwear to men’ and had the children work without rest breaks for YouTube content.
The case was settled last year, but a new Netflix documentary is set to look further into the momager’s ‘cult-like manipulation’ of the aspiring child stars.
Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing releases today (9 April) and delves into the ‘context and many of the specifics’ alleged by the 11 members of social media group The Squad.
Smith and Hunter Hill (her then-boyfriend and colleague) denied the allegations in the lawsuit and it was settled for $1.85 million (£1.45 million) while the claimants had originally sought at least $22 million (£17.2 million) in damages.
With over 12 million followers on YouTube and six million on Instagram, 17-year-old Piper has been making content and appearing on screen since a young age.
Around 2017 and 2018, her mum Tiffany started to form The Squad, with a rotating cast of tweens appearing in her videos.
They’d be involved in various storylines and vlog style content on Piper’s YouTube channel. And eventually, some members moved in with the influencer and Smith in order to boost their content output.
From the outside, their videos seemed silly and innocent, but some of The Squad’s parents began to take issue with the way Smith directed the kids to behave – both on and off camera.
Eleven members of the squad filed the lawsuit in complaint of exploitation and being ‘frequently subjected to an emotionally, physically and sometimes sexually abusive environment perpetrated by Piper’s mom’.
Content retrieved from: https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/netflix/squad-influencer-netflix-documentary-tiffany-smith-piper-rockelle-453567-20250408.
