Employees Who Worked at YouTube Say Violent Threats From Volatile 'Creators' Have Been Going on For Years (businessinsider.com) 349
Anonymous readers share a report: YouTube managers had no way to predict Nasim Aghdam would go on a bloody rampage, but they had plenty of reasons to fear that someone like her might one day show up, say former employees. Aghdam was the 38-year-old, disgruntled YouTube video creator who arrived at the company's San Bruno, California, headquarters on April 3 and began blasting away with a 9mm handgun. She wounded three staffers before she killed herself. Police say leading up to the shooting Aghdam, who was from San Diego, believed YouTube sought to censor her and ruin her life.
This kind of violence is unprecedented in YouTube's 13-year-history, though Aghdam's anger and paranoia aren't unique among the millions of people who create and post videos to the site, according to five former YouTube employees. In exclusive interviews, they told Business Insider that going back to the service's earliest days, frustrated creators -- seething over one of YouTube's policy changes or the other -- have threatened staffers with violence. Typically the threats were delivered via email. At least once, a video creator confronted a YouTube employee face-to-face and promised he would "destroy" him.
This kind of violence is unprecedented in YouTube's 13-year-history, though Aghdam's anger and paranoia aren't unique among the millions of people who create and post videos to the site, according to five former YouTube employees. In exclusive interviews, they told Business Insider that going back to the service's earliest days, frustrated creators -- seething over one of YouTube's policy changes or the other -- have threatened staffers with violence. Typically the threats were delivered via email. At least once, a video creator confronted a YouTube employee face-to-face and promised he would "destroy" him.
narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Interesting)
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder with a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or about their appearance. They often take advantage of the people around them. The behavior typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of social situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
so... every politician, ever?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Not all of them. Many politicians don't have an excessive need for admiration. They do what they must in order to get votes, but that's it.
Don't get me wrong here....I agree that all politicians are evil. And that is a matter of logical necessity. The job attracts evil people, and evil people have and advantage over good people when trying to get the job, and even if a good person does get the job the subsequent need to compromise with evil people in order to get anything done has an unavoidable corrupt
Re: (Score:2)
Some politicians don't want admiration. They prefer to stay in the background and have control. They are the ones that want to tell you how to behave, what to drive, when you can drive it, what you should or should not eat, etc.
Maybe it's part of their control strategy since being stealthy when doing this shit is a requirement.
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to think it had something to do with the facts that this gun killing crime didn't fit with the parameters that the left considers more beneficial to their agenda to get rid of guns and enact more gun control.
I guess it was inconvenient that the shooter:
1. Was female
2. Was a foreigner, or at the very least, was not a white guy.
3. Was a handgun, and not a scary looking black semi-automtic rifle. Nope, a semi-automatic handgun just isn't as scary, so not wanting to press that in the news.
But still...people were killed, and yet....well, we had no marches, no politicians screaming "think of the children", and calling legal gun owners murderers, or trying to vilify the NRA (which by the way, is made up of and funded by gun owning US citizens, it isn't a faceless evil corporation).....
Funny isn't it? I think it was news worthy what...maybe 2 days tops?
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Insightful)
no politicians screaming "think of the children"
Maybe because no children were killed in this particular incident?
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, same thing with the Maryland school shooting that happened a couple of weeks ago.
1. Handgun
2. Shooter had it illegally, so 'background checks' and 'age limits', etc would not help at all
3. Shooter taken out by armed security
That one disappeared REAL fast
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe instead of it being covered up it just got overshadowed by worse events...
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Informative)
Posting as AC due to being long-time-reader, and probably my second post in 20 years. Your facts are off. Not that I see any connection between the Maryland shooting in St. Mary's and the Youtube shooting, but I can't help myself because you're wrong on the internet. There's an XKCD for that.
I live in the next County over and have been following this unusually closely just because it's local. So let's go:
1. Handgun. Yes. A Glock 9mm, I assume a Glock 19. If I'm not mistaken, such handguns are legally limited to a 10-round magazine in Maryland. I'm not certain because I haven't looked into owning a gun in this state. I'm a transplant from Virginia and am a gun owner. But my current circumstances preclude me from keeping a firearm of any sort in my home. I have seen no reports that the shooter had more than one magazine in possession, so that indicates a maximum possible load of 11 rounds.
2. Shooter had it illegally. Technically, yes. In the sense that a 14-year-old drives a parent's car illegally. He was not of legal age to purchase or own a firearm of any sort in the State of Maryland. The Glock in question was his father's, who I assume did own it legally. But he couldn't be bothered to secure it in a gun safe, it was subsequently acquired by the shooter, and here we are.
3. Shooter taken out by armed security. This is a false statement. The shooter shot his girlfriend (or perhaps recently ex-girlfriend). He then shot himself. The "armed security" you speak of was a school resource officer who happened to be unusually close by. The resource officer shot the shooter simultaneously. This was widely reported in the media as an example of good guys with guns ending bad guys with guns. Several days later the coroner's report came out and it stated that the shooter's fatal bullet was his own, not the resource officer's.
This was not a "school shooting" in the traditional sense. This was an incident of domestic violence. The people involved were high school age so it's reasonable to conjecture that any such domestic violence, involving guns or not, is likely to happen at school. Had they been ten years older it would have happened at home or at work. Had he been slightly less homicidal, he would have beaten her at school. Having been at Virginia Tech in April of 2007, please refrain from accusing me of splitting hairs. I know what a mass shooting at school looks like in some detail. This is not that.
From the available evidence that I've read (mostly from local, rural, moderately conservative-leaning media) there is no indication that the shooter intended to shoot anyone other than his girlfriend and himself. Since the coroner's report states that the fatal bullet was his own, the combination of these two facts yields the result that the resource officer's actions (actions I support, for the record) led to no difference in outcome.
Now the real conjecture comes. There's no evidence that I've read to substantiate the notion that this was in play here. But statistically, most domestic violence is a learned behaviour. Most domestic abusers are so because they saw a parent being a domestic abuser. Dollars to donuts, this kid saw that gun aimed by his father at his mother at least once. Mass shootings are perpetrated by someone completed different. Stephen Cho was deeply unhinged, for sure, but I very much doubt he saw one of his parents kill thirty-some unarmed civilians.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe because on average there's over 90 gun deaths in the US per day it's not particularly newsworthy (https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/#DailyDeaths)? If it didn't happen at Youtube, who would even care? There's no need to jump to conspiracy theory.
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a single death with a gun, only the shooter dead, practically a suicide. Their are 60 suicides by gun a day in the us, around 30 homicides a day with guns.
How loud and for how long do you expect the "liberals" to drag out each of these 90 deaths a day?
Honestly in a case like this, that doesn't fit the mold and results in a single death, their is little to gain by attempting to address it, and publicizing it makes repeats more likely. When you have 90 deaths a day by guns in the US, and less than 15% of them are by woman, even lower rates by foreigners, much more is to be gained by society to not focus on this unusual situation.
If anything I am a little surprised no news media focused on how California's laws, making it so much more difficult to get semi-automatics rifles and big clips... may have reduced the impact of this crime, could even have something to do with California being 42nd out of the 50 states in gun homicide rate. And how they have much better reporting of the mentally ill... already makes mass death situations like that one in Florida and one in Nevada less likely. They could have used this one to point out these things again, but maybe all the media are not all a bunch of liberals looking for any reason to vilify those on the right.
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. It's remained in the news, as the story has developed. The police released the body camera footage from their earlier encounter with her a few days ago... that made the Friday news. And just this morning, there was a segment on KCBS about possible possible security changes at company campuses as as result of the shooting. But hey... carry on... and don't let a little thing like facts get in the way of your narrative.
It was 3 people shot (Score:2)
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny isn't it? I think it was news worthy what...maybe 2 days tops?
Hahaha yes, funny!
I mean it must be a liberal consipracy to do something. Of course if it was in the news for longer it would be a liberal conspiracy to take your guns. Either way it must be a liberal conspiracy.
Re: narcissistic personality disorder (Score:2)
Big Brother Google knows what's best for us proles.
Re: narcissistic personality disorder (Score:4, Informative)
MOST Americans do not have access to automatic rifles.....they are VERY rare, and aside form having to have very special approvals and tax stamps from the BATF, you have to have the $$ to buy the limited supply of them. Cheapest goes for about $10K these days I believe.
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:4, Interesting)
Not all of them. Many politicians don't have an excessive need for admiration. They do what they must in order to get votes, but that's it.
Don't get me wrong here....I agree that all politicians are evil.
I disagree with this thinking, I agree that there's a disproportionate number of "evil" politicians, and a bunch more who went in good and were corrupted by the system. But I think there's a lot more who, despite being ambitious, are also genuinely trying to do what they think to be the right thing with integrity.
I find the "all politicians are evil" to be really counter-productive. It lets the bad ones get away with anything since they're all assumed to be evil anyways. And the good ones aren't rewarded for being good since people assume ulterior motives.
I think that's one of the things that got Trump elected, he was ridiculously corrupt and dishonest but a lot of people couldn't really register it because they already assumed all politicians to be completely corrupt and dishonest. If anything they found him more trustworthy because the corruption and lies were so obvious people didn't feel deceived and he seemed more honest.
Re: (Score:3)
So... exactly the kind of person YouTube encourages to become a "creator" as opposed to the other rif-raf that just occasionally uploads a video?
Re: (Score:3)
There is a degree Narcissism involved if you are going to be a full time content creator. It is a lot of work to do this full time, so stroking ones ego is a form of compensation that helps makes it worth it. This is the same as with many other performers or public facing people. The difference it YouTube is a medium where you don't need to deal the more level headed people who may say "No" or you have gone to far. Or just flat out fire you and retcon in a replacement character. They lack any humility fac
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:narcissistic personality disorder (Score:5, Informative)
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder
I've been writing a book on this subject and the impact of the psychological abuse from NPD. One abusive parent is required and one fawning parent who feels guilty about the abuse and tries to compensate.
with a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration,
Also entitlement and imposing their emotional needs onto you via psychological manipulation.
and a lack of empathy.
I have to clear this bit up because it's important, especially if you don't want to become a victim. Empathy's traditional meaning is an awareness of other peoples feeling. Somehow, in the modern vernacular, it has been attached to compassion for other peoples feelings.
To be clear, narcissists do have empathy, however they way they use it to manipulate people better so they can secure narcissistic supply.
People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or about their appearance. They often take advantage of the people around them.
Thinking about it, but rarely achieving it. To be clear, narcissists are losers. They aren't talented enough at anything to be able to get what they want because they are so preoccupied manipulating people around them to get the emotional validation they seek.
This is the essence of narcissistic supply and everything they do is geared around how and what they have to do to manipulate people into interacting with them that way.
It's the narcissists sense of absolute superiority that makes them unable to submit to any discipline that would make them good any anything to generate those feelings in people in a genuine way. Everything about the narcissist is their false self and maintaining the perception of it.
The behavior typically manifests by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of social situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The correction was necessary because they, themselves were abused over time. If you are going to feel any compassion for a narcissist feel it for when they were a child from age 3-13 when their brains were still plastic and their abusive parent conditioned them to being abused and the fawning parent told them they were special. After this age the narcissist is beyond help because they don't think anything is wrong with them and over time they will drive their victims to complete emotional breakdowns remorselessly and then discard them callously.
You have nailed it that it is those people that would attack the Youtube staffers instead of being grateful they have a platform. I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis, however the traits are there. Youtube took their narcissistic supply away from them, caused them an un-excusable narcissistic injury, they felt entitled to retribution.
What I'll point out though is narcissists are conscious of getting into trouble so this person was highly likely to be slipping over to an anti-social personality disorder. It's likely they are diagnose-able with one of these conditions.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. When your business involves interacting (even digitally) with millions of people, it would be inconceivable for you NOT to encounter some people who are nuts.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never had anything I felt was a serious death threat in my life. Even on the internet. And I'm Amimojo.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame the internet (Score:2)
In the past these crazy people all existed but were limited to people they interacted with in real life. Now crazy people find each other and get egged on by the rest of the internet.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
If only they would just do themselves before harming others, then who cares?
And, if they didn't have a gun, they'd do it some other way.....like you said, they are unstable.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
An inanimate object didn't kill those people, a crazy person did. If guns didn't exist she would have used something else. That's what crazy people do.
But please, keep blaming the inanimate object.
Re:News at eleven (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeahhhh, except guns are designed for the efficient killing of people. Sure, you can kill people with a shot glass full of water, but it's not like it's going to be easy. There are very few efficient killing machines to which we give people access, other than guns.
Re: (Score:2)
Well it wasn't very well designed then considering in this circumstance it only killed one person and that was the operator...
Re: (Score:2)
Given 9/11 and the truck attacks in Nice and Berlin, you could also make an argument that simply steering vehicles into people is more effective too. Good l
Re: (Score:2)
fyi only.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeahhhh, except guns are designed for the efficient killing of people. Sure, you can kill people with a shot glass full of water, but it's not like it's going to be easy. There are very few efficient killing machines to which we give people access, other than guns.
Nobody shot up the Walnut Grove schoolhouse, despite approximately every teenager there having access to guns.
Something's changed, but it's not the access to guns.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This like the comment above show a shocking level of self delusion and purposeful ignorance. Guns are designed to kill things (sometimes people). Guns are the the most recent design of a very long evolution of tools of war and tools of hunting, designed to kill your target. To deny this is to ignore the very long history of firearms.
Re:News at eleven (Score:5, Insightful)
Well guns are downright shitty at propelling objects at great velocities. A particle accelerator, low-bypass afterburning turbofan, or rocket engine would do far better jobs, depending on the size of the object and how long you want it to go fast. So why the fuck are people using guns for propelling their objects? They only apply thrust/acceleration for a tiny fraction of a second to very specific small objects and the top speeds are garbage.
But the gun makes perfect sense as a purpose-built deadly weapon, isn't that odd? The projectile is ideally sized for killing people and smaller animals, the range makes sense for use by a human, the speed is decent, it's as if that was its intended purpose throughout history!
Cars on the other hand are downright shitty weapons. They're designed, to the greatest practical extent, not to kill. They tend to break on impact. Newer ones will stop by themselves if you attempt to drive them into a person or vehicle. You have to attack a dense crowd of people with a vehicle the size of a small house to cause deaths in the same league as a gun could.
Re:News at eleven (Score:4, Insightful)
An object that just happens to be perfectly shaped for penetrating the human body and causing fatal injuries.
Re: (Score:3)
You can own a car without a license or insurance, as long as you don't drive it on public roads.
I do the same with my guns, I do not take them out in public and use them, I only use them in designated, private areas (gun range, or friend's who have land outside of city limits where it is perfectly legal to discharge weapons).
S
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Shooting is considered a sport and even part of the olympics. My guns haven't killed anyone but oddly enough Ted Kennedy's car has a body count.
Re: (Score:2)
I use guns to punch small holes in paper targets for recreation and sport along with the vast majority of other gun owners. Why should my guns be taken away because crazy people are using them? Punish the person not the instrument.
Re: (Score:2)
You can also point a gun at someone to demand this someone to stop doing something, and solve the conflict peacefully.
You can't do that with a sword or a car or most inanimate objects.
Re:News at eleven (Score:5, Insightful)
If guns didn't exist she would have used something else.
You sound very convinced of that. I'm not. How do you know what she would have done without a gun? The gun didn't cause her to become violent, but it made it easier. And the "something else" she might have used would likely have been less effective than a pistol.
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, the pistol she did use only caused a single fatality and that was of the operator of the gun. Probably would have been easier to just drive a car through the front door...
Re: (Score:2)
Plenty of examples where individuals use knives, cars, explosives, poison, strangulation, pushing someone over a cliff... The effectiveness of the tool used is meaningless.
Meaningless? You think we would have had the same headline if she'd gone into YouTube and started strangling people?
Unless she was a highly trained ninja (Score:2, Insightful)
Like everything else, guns are best when they're legal, taxed and regulated. We got the first two, it's time for #3.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny...I've had the regulated background checks on my gun purchases.
It is highly regulated, hell, you should see what we've had to do just to buy supressors, just to make them more hearing safe when target shooting with them, talk about overly regulated!!
Go to a gun show (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Guns don't kill people, bat shit crazy people with easy access to guns do. I'm in support of stronger gun regulation but in this case I don't think it would have made a difference. She only managed to wound other people because she used a 9mm pistol. Had she used an assault rifle I'm sure the number of deaths would have been much higher.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm..I don't think you mean what you think you mean.
It is VERY difficult to get an assault weapon as a private citizen of the US. They just do not sell fully automatic weapons very freely in the US. You have to first find someone that has one that was manufactured prior to 1986, and willing to sell it AND...well, for the cheapest one, you'd better have $10K or more.
And then you have to fill out the BATF paperwork pay
Re: (Score:2)
The reason I didn't specifically say AR-15 is because there those other rifles you talk about. Now the exact definition of an "Assault Rifle" is unclear but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone try to argue that it had to be a fully automatic rifle. Even if you had a fully automatic rifle the best thing you can do is switch it to semi-auto to improve your accuracy; however I've never actually shot a fully automatic rifle so I can't speak from personal experience on this one.
This is also the first t
Re: (Score:2)
That actually make my analogy more accurate; a ford mustang is only slightly larger then a ford pinto.
According to Websters
: any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire; also : a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semiautomatic fire
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
However, I will argue that the exact definition should be far more specific. You are also right that "reasonable" gun regulation means a lot of things to a lot of people. In general I think guns like the AR-15 should not be so easily available but still available to "qualified" people. For an example of qualified, see what it takes to own any gun in Aus
Re: (Score:2)
In this particular case, I agree. She could have easily used a large knife or a car to inflict the same damage.
Also, I don't like blaming inanimate objects either. In the case of the Las Vegas shooter for instance, where 59 people were killed and 527 injured, I don't blame the 47 guns he owned, nor do I blame the 23 guns he had in his hotel room. In that case, I blame the shooter and also our Federal government for not placing a reasonable limit on the ownership of guns on someone who was not a gun shop own
Re: (Score:2)
An inanimate object didn't kill those people, a crazy person did. If guns didn't exist she would have used something else. That's what crazy people do.
But please, keep blaming the inanimate object.
Sure if she were completely rational she could have found a way of killing people that was roughly as effective.
As could have all the school shooters, abusive spouses, unstable young men, and other perpetrators of gun violence. But they generally don't.
Because their objective isn't specifically to kill people, instead they're obsessed with that specific narrative of going in there with a gun because a gun carries a very heavy cultural legacy of being a tool for taking human lives.
Note, this explains why ter
It is much harder to kill with other object (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's easier to get a gun than build a bomb, but both are within reach of an average human being. If someone is that bent on planning a violent rampage I don't think the lack of access to guns is going to stop them. I question if a complete ban on all guns in the US would even slow them down or reduce the frequency of occurrence.
But I also think zero guns, if that were even possible, would very much reduce our homicide rate. You know, the normal murders were people kill people that they know and make up the
Re: (Score:2)
It's easier to get a gun than build a bomb,
Only for people that lack imagination. That empty gas can you just filled your lawn mower with.....excellent bomb.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
A car can kill more people than a gun can. Faster too.
Re: (Score:2)
I would challenge that a car can kill people faster, unless it is in a crowd of people with nowhere to get out of the way.
People usually have some possibility of being able to get out of the way of a car.
Car attacks are unlikely inside of a secured building such as YouTube.
Also unlikely inside a school or workplace.
A car attack is very different than a concealed gun attack in an enclosed area, or a sniper attack such as in Las Vegas.
Depending upon how effectively
Re: News at eleven (Score:2)
Car attacks are unlikely inside of a secured building such as YouTube.
But if you pull the fire alarm your victims will all come out and congregate in the parking lot in departmental clusters for your convenience.
Re: (Score:3)
... congregate in the parking lot in departmental clusters for your convenience.
That sounds like you've put some serious thought into this.
"Ah, there you are HR Department. Smythe must be in that group somewhere..."
Re:News at eleven (Score:4, Funny)
That one time a guy drove a car over a load of pedestrians from the window of his hotel room... I don't remember that.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank god for that, too - can you imagine how many more casualties there would have been if he had driven a fully-loaded gasoline tanker at speed through the crowd?
Re: (Score:3)
It's not wise to bring a gun to an SUV fight...
Re: (Score:2)
So, you are implying that the VAST MAJORITY of the public, the law abiding citizen, must therefore be forced to the rights, and privileges of the lowest common denominator?
I know that the many, many guns and store of ammo have yet to harm anyone, and barring someone breaking in and threatening my life, or doing the same wh
Re: (Score:2)
So, you are implying that the VAST MAJORITY of the public, the law abiding citizen, must therefore be forced to the rights, and privileges of the lowest common denominator?
Right? I mean, if we're going to play the "we must ban X because criminals might use it" game, then I would argue that free speech should be the first right taken away from us - after all, how many people do we credit Adolf Hitler with killing, using nothing but his words?
Seriously - every argument I've heard against the 2nd is equally valid against the 1st (which is to say, not valid at all).
Re: (Score:3)
Well, let's make those numbers a bit more meaningful, ok?
The problem is gun violence....people killing other people, right'?
So, let's take out the suicides from the US numbers, and then, well...compare the gun violent deaths against the middle east apples to apples and they aren't even close, the US isn't that bad.
You take out the suicides....and the numbers of gun violent related deaths are less than automobile deaths.
You
Re: (Score:2)
A crazy person armed with knives can probably be taken down by several able bodied people that don't have any weapons other than ordinary objects. Chairs. Pillows / matresses. I'll leave it to your imagination.
Right - that's why London has a lower murder rate than Ft. Worth, TX.
Oh, wait...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe he is referencing the Oklahoma City bombing [wikipedia.org] Twice the number of deaths as the Las Vegas shooting, and he drove away safely after.
Re: (Score:2)
Except you can't order a gun online and have it shipped to you. Why tell such outright lies?
Re: (Score:2)
Which Walmart has guns on sale for $50?! I'll camp out for THAT!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, PLEASE...point out to me the gun and ammo you can buy for $50 at Walmart first.
And next, you cannot buy a gun online and have it shipped directly to you at home.
If you buy online, you have to have it shipped to a FFL (Federal Firearms Licensee)......where when you show up to claim the firearm, you have to fill out a form and go through the usual background check....which you have to pass first.
Please, g
Re: (Score:2)
Or, you can go to the gas station, buy $1 worth of gas, and kill 87 people [wikipedia.org] by starting a fire.
Re: (Score:2)
They aren't even hiding it any more.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
This story says nothing special about YouTube. In any group of a billion people (i.e., YouTube users), some of them are going to be crazy, or violent, or both.
Can't make a living on YouTube videos? (Score:2, Funny)
Then get a fucking day job like the rest of us losers.
Re: (Score:2)
...and how many disgruntled employees with day jobs have "gone postal".
Most people with day jobs aren't disgruntled. Those people should probably take action to change their situation, rather than burning the world down. Not that rational discussion has much meaning to someone in such an emotional state.
I smell a rat ... (Score:2)
media take on statistics (Score:2)
One incident - harbringer, two incident - trend, three incidents - national catastrophe
Too many false positives (Score:2)
they had plenty of reasons to fear that someone like her might one day show up,
No, they did not.
Employees Say Violent Threats Have Been Going on For Years
anger and paranoia aren't unique among the millions of people who create and post videos to the site
These demonstrate that many people say obnoxious things, but that does not mean that they will actually do something.
People ask why the FBI does not identify violent shooters before they kill people. I am sure the FBI gets tens of thousands of reports about such people, and very very few actually do anything. How do you tell the difference?
YouTube treats their creators like shit (Score:5, Insightful)
YT randomly changes policies, which are always vaguely written policies. It's impossible for creators to contact YT for help with arbitrarily (and often wrongly) applied policies. Many otherwise successful moneymakers, for YT first and foremost, suddenly and without warning are thrown under the bus. I've never been a creator, but how many people does YT have to screw over before they screw over the wrong person?
Re:YouTube treats their creators like shit (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope YT continues to screw over content creators. The best thing that could happen would be if that SJW feminist CEO Susan Wojcicki, who is worth nearly half a billion dollars as she cheats content producers out of income, drops policy bombs until there is a mass revolt.
It isn't that I want to see such a marvel of a marketplace of ideas burn; it would just be preferable to a death by a thousand cuts in having the producers disperse. A new platform that protects free speech, that promotes content fairly, and is not capricious in dealing with content producers is required. I would gladly pay to access that.
Re: (Score:2)
They already have. The girl who shot the place up was unhappy in a sudden major reduction in videos watched on her channel.
She was nuts, yes, 100% but they fucked with her, so she came for them.
Bad business model? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't like to do business with anyone I can't find in real life and shake by the shirt collar if they fuck with me. Youtube is so reliant on algorithms and anonymity that they forget that people can track them down and give them what-for. They feel so insulated from their user base that they treat them like crap with impunity. If they had to shake hands and make eye contact with the people they partner with, they would never treat people this horribly.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just Youtube (Score:2)
Any time you make changes that impact someoneâ(TM)s income in a negative way, people get angry about it.
How angry depends on how badly they were screwed over in addition to the individuals personality.
See any news story about a recently fired employee who came back armed to the teeth with vengeance on their mind.
This type of behavior is far from unique to online venues.
Unsafe work space (Score:2)
Scary YouTube creators (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I saw them and I think if they said "Reinstate our YouTube channel with ALL the monetisation. NOW." to me, my only response would be "Yes, ma'am." And I would.
Re: (Score:3)
Old lady on pension that invests in Youtube assaulted by irate content author. News at 11.
Re: (Score:2)
Youtube does not have the capacity to censor you. They are never going to censor you, because they can't. If they spend a million dollars in an effort to censor you, they will fail and you will effortlessly defy their million dollar effort even if you are dirt poor. The worst they can do, is kick you off their site so that you have to host it yourself or find a Youtube competitor to host it.
Censorship is not exclusive to the government putting their boot on your throat. It is quite correct to say that Youtube is censoring topics or creators if they are curating their content in such a way as to suppress their videos. It may not be a first amendment violation but that is also debatable to a degree in the following. If Youtube doesn't want to be liable for the content on its site that it does not upload, perhaps platforms of this size should be given the choice of liability or common carrier
Re: (Score:3)
Humans are fuel for the AIs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But do they have an obligation to provide transparent decision-making and predictable rules and regulations?
The more cynical among us know that web services, especially free ones, are likely to go tits up, change policies/prices, and generally fuck over their users and customers as soon as management figures out the next change that makes them an extra dime.
But most people kind of expect things to be more stable and predictable, and it is entirely unsurprising when the people who built up these services wit
Re: (Score:2)
There are a lot of problems with YouTube and censoring of content. Personally, I still take issue with the way they block videos simply based on a supposed copyright infringement any time they detect a copyrighted piece of music playing in the background.
(One guy I know just recently complained how they uploaded some video clip of his family at a ball game, and the video got pulled because some rock music came over the PA system in the ballpark during the video.)
The only reasonable way to deal with this, I
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people think they are entitled to an income stream care od youtube?
Because Youtube makes it appear that they're entitled to that income stream.
https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/revenue-basics [youtube.com]
For example, the link above claims that "Whether your goal is to earn back some of what you spent making your videos or to become a sustainable business, YouTube’s platform lets you make money with successful videos." Notice that they claim that making YouTube videos can be a "sustainable business".
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't pretend that it only goes one way. Youtube treats their content creators like garbage and gets away with it because of the same principle of Internet anonymity. Hiding behind an algorithm to screw people out of their livelyhoods is at least as evil. Whether it's toxicly narcissistic gamers, or toxicly narcissistic bosses, it's the same thing.