We now know some details about Nasim Najafi
Aghdam, the woman who opened fire at YouTube
headquarters on Tuesday, April 3rd.
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Three people were taken to the hospital with
gunshot wounds, though thankfully, no deaths
were reported, except for the shooter who
took her own life.
As is typical with shootings in public places,
there were initial reports of multiple shooters,
a man wearing body armor, and dozens of victims,
thankfully none of which turned out to be
true.
And how sad is it that I have to start that
sentence with "typically in public shootings."
That is not something... those words just
should not be going together in a sentence.
What we do know is that Nasim Aghdam was a
37-year-old woman from San Diego who was reported
missing by her family the day before the shooting.
She had accounts on multiple video and social
media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook and DailyMotion.
She posted content on a variety of subjects,
from veganism and animal rights, to exercise,
to freedom of speech.
It’s clear from her website and video content
that Aghdam was angry at YouTube for what
she perceived as slights against her channel.
She posted screenshots of analytics from YouTube
to her website in an attempt to show that
the platform had recently suppressed her videos
and prevented her from earning money on the
platform.
It even led her to suggest that speech in
the U.S. is less free than it is in the Middle
East.
Now, contrary to what a lot of people might
have already read floating around the Internet,
Aghdam was not a Muslim, and she's not new
to the United States.
She moved to the U.S. from Iran with her family
in 1996 when she was a teenager, and was a
member of the Bahá'í Faith.
But religion wasn't actually a focus of any
of her channels.
Her website was much more focused on activism
surrounding the treatment of animals, and
on the way she felt YouTube was being unfair
to her channel.
She even embedded this 2016 video from Casey
Neistat about YouTube’s choice to demonetize
certain videos.
If YouTube determines your video to be not
advertiser friendly, it pulls all monetization
so you don't make any money from that video.
She also shared this video on the subject
of censorship from Bite Size Vegan.
I am by no means the first nor will I be the
last activist threatened with unfair and unfounded
road blocks to speaking the truth.
Outspoken individuals in every movement have
always fought censorship.
The issue of monetization has been a big issue
for all of us who post content on YouTube.
There's many different descriptions and details
about how all of this algorithmic stuff works,
but here's a quick primer.
Some videos you’ll on YouTube have ads before
them, and the channel creator gets a small
piece of that advertising revenue.
And this is how many creators make a living.
In 2016, YouTube changed its policy on which
videos could have ads played before them,
after major advertisers like Amazon, Coca-Cola
and others, pulled out of the program after
discovering their commercials were playing
before videos that showed violence, hate speech,
and other stuff they really didn’t want
to be associated with.
In order to keep posting videos to the site,
YouTube and creators all need advertisers.
So YouTube updated its algorithm to automatically
remove ads from videos it deemed "Not Advertiser
Friendly."
And the result is that some channels are absolutely
effected more than others.
Like channels focusing on veganism.
Many of them show shocking images of animals
being slaughtered.
And if you think about it, an advertiser like
Burger King or Tyson Chicken probably want
absolutely nothing to do with that anyway.
You may or may not agree, but it does make
sense that YouTube made that decision.
And this is what’s being referred to as
the Adpocalypse.
If I was an advertiser, I certainly wouldn't
want my ads running on content that was malicious
or gruesome in any way, shape or form.
Because ultimately the video becomes a associated
with the content that you are advertising
and if they're polar opposites then I totally
understand.
But the problem then comes in where with YouTube,
they have bots that are scanning different
channels to see what is gruesome content and
what is inappropriate content and those bots
miss a lot of stuff.
There are millions and millions of people
on YouTube who are posting tons and tons of
content to the site daily by the minute even,
so to have humans go through all that content
is an unrealistic goal.
Then you have bots who go through this content
and sometimes get it wrong and then you have
creators who are just super frustrated because
their content that shouldn't have been flagged
is flagged.
Ultimately, frustration at this whole situation
might have been Aghdam motive, but does it
give her a right to then go and shoot up a
bunch of people?
Absolutely not.
This is the act of somebody who was clearly
mentally unstable.
Aghdam’s father, Ismail, told police that
she hated YouTube, and even informed them
that she was likely heading to the company’s
headquarters when he reported her missing
on Monday.
Her brother told reporters: “She was always
complaining that YouTube ruined her life.”
But when police found her sleeping in her
car early Tuesday morning, they told Ismail
that she had been found and that everything
was “under control.”
She had legally purchased a Smith & Wesson
9mm semiautomatic handgun the morning before
the shooting from a local gun range.
This may ultimately be her motive, but it's
absolutely not a rational way for any disgruntled
individual to take out frustrations.
Ever.
Our hearts go out to those who most likely
had the most frightening day on Tuesday.
We hope that every single person that was
injured by this makes a full recovery, and
as crazy as this is to say, amid the crazy
barrage of shootings that we've had in the
U.S., glad that this wasn't worse.
Let us know what you guys think.
Sound off in the comments below.
Thanks for watching.
