Nearly five years ago, a couple of YouTube stars sat down to film what would become their final upload. “This is by far the hardest video James and I have ever publicly had to make,” said Myka Stauffer—an Ohio-based mommy vlogger whose subscriber numbers had soared after the adoption of Huxley, their then almost five-year-old son from China. That life came to a screeching halt with “An Update on Our Family,” a now-deleted video in which the Stauffers tearfully revealed that after more than three years, Huxley had been rehomed with “his now new forever family.”

Myka and James explained that the extent of care required for Huxley, who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder level three, had not been clearly disclosed to them when they’d adopted him in 2017. The Stauffers were asking for privacy in the aftermath of their decision to let him be adopted by another family. The only problem? Nearly every day of Huxley’s life with the Stauffers had been exhaustively documented, and the millions who tuned in to their channel craved answers about its main character.

The backlash to their bombshell announcement is at the heart of HBO’s three-part docuseries An Update on Our Family, a Vox Media Studios production inspired by New York Magazine’s 2020 feature on the Stauffers that begins airing on Wednesday, January 15. That “shocking” article is what introduced Emmy-nominated filmmaker Rachel Mason to the scandal, and to the larger YouTube family vlogosphere that had been rocked by it.

“Should we be watching this? Maybe not,” Mason tells Vanity Fair of the impulse to make and consume entertainment focused on real children. “That question doesn’t get raised enough. I don’t think it’s the fault of anyone. The human condition is to find stories like this absolutely compelling. How can we not get sucked into a fascinating story with a kid who we’re all interested in?”

Family vlogging is a relatively unregulated corner of YouTube, a platform that turns 20 this year. And the long-term effects of living one’s childhood in front of a subscriber base are largely unknown. As such, Mason urges those who watch, make, and distribute this content to give it a second thought. “I wish I had the perfect solution. Our question needs to be raised at the higher levels, the actual platform content managers themselves,” she says. “There are regulations that are starting to come into play. But it’s probably one of the big challenges of our times.”

Viewers and fellow vloggers swiftly turned on the Stauffers after their announcement—and while admonishing the family for allegedly profiting off a vulnerable child, they clogged the algorithm with hundreds of outraged reaction videos. Mason set the internet’s wrath aside to unravel the nuances of the Stauffer story, speaking with adoption specialists and even another set of parents who chose to rehome their adopted child. Myka and James declined to be involved with the docuseries, and have mostly retreated from online life. Stauffer Garage, James’s channel devoted to car maintenance, is still producing content for more than 1 million subscribers—but Myka, whom the documentary argues received the brunt of public scrutiny, hasn’t returned to YouTube, nor has she posted on her Instagram since a written apology in June 2020. That same year, Huxley, who has since been renamed, according to the docuseries, seemed “happy and well taken care of” in his new home, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a report obtained by BuzzFeed.

Ahead, Mason discusses “the scarlet letter of our times” that the Stauffer family now wears and explains why viewers should resist taking a Baby Reindeer–esque approach to tracking down the documentary’s real-life figures.

Vanity Fair: What did you feel was most misunderstood in the reporting on or public perception of the Stauffer story?

Rachel Mason: I found it astonishing that in highlighting the need for Huxley’s privacy and the fact that he was a kid who was exposed in this horrific way, there wasn’t the same consideration raised for the Stauffers’ own children. I noted immediately that, wow, these kids are being exposed in a way that shames them publicly. It kind of grated on me. If this family is going to be the subject of scrutiny, at least protect those kids. They would obscure Huxley, but not the other kids.

So I wanted our series to point inwards and note that we are doing a story that engages in a world where a family is being put under scrutiny, and that world has to be examined within the context of our actual show. So we point out the type of cruel communication that goes on. You see each episode through the eyes of these really intense critiques of the Stauffers. And it’s important to me that all of the children are blurred.

The faces of every minor featured in the doc are obscured, while Huxley appears as more of an illustrated figure. Why was it important to differentiate how he was visually presented?

The word is actually rotoscoped. It was a very specific artistic decision and our graphics team, Alterkind, did a great job. Huxley needed to have a very clear narrative where you could feel his story and presence in a unique way. With blurring, you often get into a place where there’s a dehumanization that goes against the moment—which I think is good when you want to just obscure people. Huxley was deserving of his own storyline, and yet we had to be really careful that in doing so, we were also obscuring him. Going through lots of different treatments, it just became clear to me that a line drawing would be a beautiful way to handle it.

Hannah Cho, a Korean adoptee raised by white parents, a former mommy blogger, and a fan of the Stauffers, is our entry point to the doc. How did you find a single person who could speak to three of the doc’s biggest themes?

A team of brilliant producers. [Executive producer/showrunner] Rachael Knudsen and [producer] Jasmine Luoma worked so intensely, truly diving through every single imaginable reaction video that was put out on the internet, hundreds of videos. Hannah’s reaction video stood out.

It was really profound because she wasn’t condemning them right away. She was speaking to the value that they had brought for her. I could not believe a person like her existed with every single facet of what we needed in the series: A person who had nuance with regard to the Stauffers, who had done some family vlogging herself, and had followed every single step of their process—finding the moments of total joy in their journey, and then finding moments of absolute outrage. Every single layer of Hannah, including how she looks and speaks, [makes for] a perfect storyteller. So I chased after her like a dog on a bone, and luckily it wasn’t that hard.

Some people in the doc are reluctant to speak directly about the Stauffers. Why do you think they were, even though the family has had such a fall from grace?

Fear. It’s really palpable. Upon asking that question, I would feel the resistance. We were very open and honest [about the fact] that this project would deal with the Stauffers. And that was enough for most people to actually turn us down. So the people who were able to be on camera, they were all aware that this was something that we were looking into. But they themselves had nervousness, and it’s because of the cyberbullying that the Stauffers went through. I wouldn’t want that for anyone, and I can understand their fear. So when I would ask them about the Stauffers, there was a moment of pause. And it helped me to understand how much fear they were feeling at that moment.

Myka and James did not participate in the documentary. Did you get a sense of their feelings about the project?

We reached out pretty much immediately. I always hoped to get an answer from them. I have absolutely no idea, to be perfectly honest with you—I wish I had a magical crystal ball and could read people’s minds. I also really, really, really believe in the intention of this series to be empathetic with everyone. It would be crushing to me if they were the recipient of more harsh treatment because of our series. The series is about allowing people to understand what happens when anyone, no matter what they do, experiences public humiliation, like the Scarlet Letter of our times.

What questions did you most want to ask them?

Too many to list, and that’s the core of this series about YouTubers. You learn a lot, but then there’s so much you don’t learn. They’ve set themselves up to be fascinating people you want to understand, then you realize you can’t access a person all the way. In a way, it’s an extension of celebrity culture. But what I’ve realized is celebrities have the luxury of being protected by publicists, agents. YouTubers are getting some of those things as well, but they’re very directly connected to their fans. And when you’re a public person, there’s a very real need to have protection around you. YouTubers are very, very vulnerable, very exposed people.

The doc dives into the backlog of Stauffer YouTube videos. Going back into their channel’s archive, was there a moment or pattern that struck you the most in your understanding of what may have happened?

The pattern that was becoming clear was a desire to be really constant and regular. “We need to produce content, whatever it is, every single day.” I started recognizing that not just as a Stauffer issue—this idea that you created an appetite and now you need to feed it. And if you’ve stopped for one moment, your fans are going to be very upset.

I have a son, and I couldn’t possibly imagine filming with him every day. What am I going to even come up with? You have to be creative and you have to be constant, and if you don’t feed the beast, it’s just going to come up for more. What I noticed about this machine that you’re feeding into is if it includes your family, you’ve got to scramble when things inside your home are not going right.

It felt like people were outraged not just that Huxley was readopted, but also that the Stauffers would stop making content at the height of intrigue in their story, given that subscribers were brought into every earlier chapter.

You hit upon the central contradiction of the series, which is: when you are genuinely in trouble and you’re an influencer, what do you do? It’s an actual tightrope you have to walk. And in the Stauffers’ case, they walked it incorrectly, you could say. But also, is it okay that anyone is set up to walk on that tightrope? That’s a larger question for society.

One of our participants said that people are drawn to stories about families. These people are not professional content producers. The Osbournes or the Kardashians, there’s a team of producers involved. Maybe some of those producers occasionally say, hey guys, let’s not film this. [With] networks involved, there’s checks and balances along the way. YouTubers, it’s them and their camera, live-streaming immediately, and there’s just so much room for disaster because of that.

Some will wonder if the Stauffers could ever make a comeback. Does even asking that question mean missing the point of your docuseries?

I do believe it’s the wrong question to ask. The Stauffers making a comeback, that was a question everyone was always asking regardless of our series. If you watch our series and are just going to be fixated on that…I would hope that people want to have more concern for the Stauffers, and all people within this, in the best possible way. I hope things are going well or okay for all the different people involved. The Stauffer children were on my mind the whole time, and they continue to be. I feel like nobody gave them any compassion. They lost a child that had come into their family that was supposed to be their brother.

Those kids faced a trauma unto themselves. I know that the focus can be on Myka and James a lot, but I really hope that the series doesn’t land in a place—it’s sort of like the Baby Reindeer controversy, where everybody immediately wanted to know what’s going on with [the real-life Martha]. I thought, oh, that’s too bad. But again, how can we not be fascinated?

Was there an interview that made you think most differently about this story’s impact?

The conversations around adoption were so profound. One of our producers, who’s a very good friend of mine, is also an adoptee. At the end of some really intense interviews with adoptees like Hannah, we would have a moment where we acknowledge that this has never really been discussed. In a strange way, the Stauffer story provided a platform for Hannah to get really very deep about her own experience as an adoptee. I feel really proud that there was an important conversation to be had for people in the adoption community. Our story producers, our editors, really skillfully crafted a narrative that I hope does a lot to illuminate the adoption experience.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.