1 week Ago By Inga Parkel
In 2016, eight-year-old Piper Rockelle uploaded her first YouTube video — a clip of her making homemade slime. By 2018, her online popularity had boomed with the help of her “momager,” Tiffany Smith, who managed to enlist several other fellow child influencers to start collaborating on videos. Referred to as The Squad , the group began pumping out content.
On camera, they appeared to be having a good time filming clips of everyday vlogs and pranks. But behind the scenes, a different story was unfolding. Four years later, 11 former Squad members sued Smith for $22 million , alleging they suffered “emotional, verbal, physical, and at times, sexual abuse” while creating content for Rockelle’s channel.
Through interviews with former Squad members and their parents, Netflix dives deep into this disturbing tale in its new three-part docuseries, Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing. Smith raised her only daughter, Rockelle, as a single mother in Canton, Georgia. Growing up, Rockelle dreamed of fame after watching TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras , according to the Los Angeles Times .
At just four years old, Rockelle entered and won her first beauty pageant. From then on, Smith committed herself to ensuring her daughter’s success. “A lot of people think that she’s living her life that she didn’t have and pursuing it through me,” Rockelle told the outlet in 2022.
“Absolutely not. She’s making this so perfect for me.” After a few years in the pageant world, Rockelle became, as Smith described it, “defeated.
” So, in May 2016, when Rockelle expressed interest in social media, her mother approved. With Smith’s consent, Rockelle opened an account on the app Musical.ly, which would later become TikTok.
Rockelle quickly became one of the platform’s more popular creators. In November of that year, Rockelle was invited out to Los Angeles for a meet-and-greet with other Musical.ly stars.
There, she was approached by a manager, who wanted to represent her and suggested she start a YouTube channel. It wasn’t long before Rockelle’s subscriber count started to grow. Smith then began recruiting other young influencers, such as Sophie Fergi, to collaborate on videos.
At the direction of Smith and her boyfriend, Hunter Hill (now 28), the group dubbed “The Squad” consistently filmed videos out of Smith and Rockelle’s Los Angeles home. Their videos garnered billions of views and earned them millions of dollars. “You’ve got to remember, a lot of these kids joined The Squad during Covid,” said The Dark Side of Kidfluencing co-director Jenna Rosher on an episode of Netflix’s You Can’t Make This Up podcast.
“And a lot of these kids were actors. They weren’t in a regular school situation, they were mostly homeschooled. The Squad provided this amazing community and an opportunity to meet friends and make videos together.
” However, things quickly began to spiral out of control. Between 2017 and 2020, several original Squad members quit the group due to Smith allegedly fostering a toxic environment. The children’s parents also claimed to have witnessed disturbing behavior by Smith.
In January 2022, 11 former Squad members sued both Smith and Hill, who often appeared in videos with Rockelle, for alleged “emotional, verbal, physical, and at times, sexual abuse” while creating content for the latter’s YouTube channel. According to the $22 million lawsuit, Smith was described as a “mean-spirited control freak” who allegedly made “wildly offensive and sexually explicit comments” about children’s genitalia. Lawyers accused Smith of touching the children on their legs, thighs, and buttocks, while one plaintiff said Smith mailed several of Rockelle’s bras and underwear to “an unknown individual” who liked to “smell this stuff.
” The plaintiffs were asked to stage romantic “crushes” on each other for the purpose of Rockelle’s video content, including one video from 2021 in which several children participated in a “last to stop kissing” game. They were allegedly given “very sexually explicit instructions” during filming, such as “aggressively” kissing each other and wearing “sexually revealing clothing.” “Tiffany absolutely wanted to do more questionable content to get more views and likes,” former Squad member Sawyer Sharbino claimed in the documentary.
The filing also included claims that the plaintiffs weren’t compensated for the use of their names, images, and likenesses in Rockelle’s content. Meanwhile, nine of the plaintiffs alleged that Smith and Hill “sabotaged” their YouTube channels after they left the Squad by falsely flagging their content as inappropriate, using bots to drive down their subscriptions, and embedding their videos on pornographic websites. Months after the initial lawsuit was filed, Smith filed a $30 million countersuit and accused the plaintiffs’ mothers of making false sexual abuse allegations to extort her.
However, she quickly dropped the lawsuit voluntarily, with lawyers representing the mothers calling her countersuit “baseless.” Before they were able to go to trial, both parties agreed to a $1.8 million settlement.
As part of the settlement terms, Smith denied any wrongdoing. “This lawsuit was never about money,” Fergi clarified in the documentary. “It was to make sure she couldn’t do what she did to me to another kid.
” Rockelle, now 17, is still making YouTube videos but at a far less frequent rate than before. Her most recent video was posted in December 2024. She also maintains a significant presence on her Instagram, often posting photos with her boyfriend, fellow creator Capri Jones.
Following the allegations against her mother, YouTube demonetized Rockelle’s channel in February 2022, making her YouTube channel unable to receive revenue from ads. Still, the controversy didn’t seem to have had a lasting effect on Rockelle’s fanbase. She currently has 6.
1 million followers on Instagram, 14.8 million on TikTok, and 12.1 million subscribers on YouTube.
To this day, Rockelle insists her mother is innocent and “did not do any of those things that they said. And I’ll stand by my mom to the end,” she said in a statement to USA Today . She additionally claimed the accusations are “mean, untrue, and honestly all about money.
” “Honestly, I just want to move on from all of this because it’s really painful to deal with every day,” Rockelle added. “And not surprisingly, my mental health has suffered more than anyone knows.” Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing is streaming on Netflix.
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