It has been almost half a year since 8 Passengers quit YouTube. The family went from posting daily vlogs to posting sporadically, to altogether stopping early this year. Their decline can be tied back to the child abuse allegations the family faced in 2020, after they released a video in which their teenage son revealed he had slept on the floor for seven months as a punishment. The allegations sparked a CPS investigation, but it was closed with insufficient evidence. While the family decried the backlash and claimed to be victims of "cancel culture," their channel was never quite the same again.
After several weeks of silence, 8 Passengers matriarch, Ruby Franke, revealed that she had stopped posting temporarily to throw herself whole-heartedly into ConneXions. The organization is run by Jodi Hildebrandt, a therapist whom was put on probation for blackmailing a client. The organization claims to provide mental health coaching and a curriculum for mental health wellness. However, these "mental health coaches" are individuals like Ruby and Kevin - completely unqualified and unlicensed to be providing the kind of counseling they are suppose to be providing.
Ruby, meanwhile, has jumped full force into her Moms of Truth support group. The group claims to be a motherhood support group, but has been filled with shocking displays of homophobia, and Ruby and Jodi encouraging parents to disrespect their kids privacy, enact horrific punishments on them, refuse to accept their sexual orientation, throw away their clothes, and not buy them Christmas gifts. Now, Ruby is finally officially calling it quits permanently for 8 Passengers - here's why.
An official end to 8 Passengers vlogging
On June 28th, 2022, Ruby took to Instagram and posted a number of InstaStories explaining her next steps. In the stories, Ruby explained that he had changed her Instagram username from @8Passengers to @moms_of_truth. Not only has the name changed, but it now seems to be run by both Ruby and Jodi, instead of just Ruby. Meanwhile, Ruby discussed how she had originally started out sharing her kids' lives in support of motherhood. However, her children are now "all grown up." Only one of their children, Shari, has officially moved away from home. Now, despite five of her children still living at home and her youngest being only 8-years-old, Ruby is already looking ahead to when her kids will all be moved out and she thinks it'll be soon. She acknowledges she can't film her kids forever, so she won't be sharing them anymore.
Everything's still about Ruby and she's not leaving
Of course, in typical Ruby fashion, she changed directions to make the conversation about herself. In a self-pitying voice, she mentioned how there are so many people who hate her, want to "cancel" her, or want her to disappear off the face of the earth. However, to those people, she wants to make it clear that she's "not going anywhere." She is going to simply rebrand 8 Passengers into "moms of truth" and spread ConneXions rhetoric. While she won't be filming her kids anymore, she will be posting podcasts, continuing her mom support group, posting on social media, and conducting ConneXions workshops. Basically, she knows she can't film her kids forever, but she can talk about "principles of truth" until she's 80 and will be doing just that. She states that supporting other moms was always what her platform was about, anyways.
The world "exploited" her children
Ruby then goes on to explain that many have accused her of exploiting her children. However, she claims that the people who accused her of exploiting her children have turned around and exploited her children themselves. What form this exploitation took, though, is unclear. Additionally, she stated that she can't share any video or picture of her kids without it being exploited. So, she is just not going to share her family with the world anymore.
What's Ruby really saying?
It's difficult to tell why Ruby is not sharing her children anymore. On the one hand, she tries to absolve herself of duty to them, by claiming they're all grown up and will be out of the house soon (they'll be moving out at 8-years-old, apparently). Then, she tries to throw accusations against her, back onto the people who made the accusations. Now, there is no doubt that people have exploited her children. There is no end to the number of edits, TikToks, YouTube reuploads, and horrific comments about Ruby's children that sick and twisted internet users have made.
However, what Ruby leaves out, is that she exploited her children first. Does this make what viewers have twisted content of her children into okay? No. But it does make her the biggest hypocrite to claim she had to stop sharing her children because others exploited them, even though no one ever would've exploited them if she hadn't first profited off of them and refused to give them any privacy. Meanwhile, her concern for the exploitation of children is a lie. This is made clear by the fact that she is clearly still capitalizing on the audience and attention that her children gave her, to create a platform on which she can share her dangerous and extreme views.
Also, no one feels bad for Ruby as she complains about the people who "hate" her. Hate is a strong word, but that's merely the term she uses for anyone who disagrees with her. Also, she truly does need to be cancelled and kicked off the internet, because she is a woman who can cause tremendous damage. The level of hatred, neglect, intolerance, discrimination, and archaic views that her and Jodi constantly advocate to real mothers seeking real advice for real situations, is nothing short of appalling. They consistently advocate for mothers to be abusive, neglectful, and hateful to their children. They push the idea that your child's soul is your number #1 priority, so giving your children a life devoid of happiness, freedom, and love, is perfectly fine, as long as you're forcing them to "live in truth."
Ruby might claim she has stopping sharing her kids because of exploitation. The fact is, she only stopped filming them because she exploited them enough to build a platform she can maintain without them. She also seems to be willing their childhood away so that she can completely shirk her parenting responsibilities and focus 100% on her own agenda, which seems to have been her plan from the start.