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YouTube Shooter 'Nasim Aghdam' Reportedly Had Website With Manifesto That Targeted YouTube For Censorship, Demonetization (abc7news.com)
The woman who entered the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, this morning and started shooting has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. According to ABC7 News, "the YouTube shooter was a user of the platform" and had "a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. According to her website, a possible motivation for the shooting could have been tied to her many YouTube accounts, which she says have seen a decline in viewership over the past few months."
Here is a timeline of events from our original post:
Police have responded to multiple 911 calls at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From a report: Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at the company, tweeted that there is an active shooter on campus. The San Bruno Police Department instructed people to stay away from 901 Cherry Avenue, where the company is located. Multiple 911 calls have been received from inside the building, according to a report from local news station KRON. In a Twitter thread, YouTube product manager Todd Sherman said that employees first thought there had been an earthquake. People began running out of their meetings, he said, but before reaching the exit, they got word that someone had a gun. Sherman said he saw blood on the floor and the stairs. He also said the shooter may have committed suicide. Vadim Lavrusik, who works at YouTube's products team, tweeted, "Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers."
Update 20:30GMT: Google has issued the following statement, "we are coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available." San Bruno Police said it was "responding to an active shooter. Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive."
Update 20:40 GMT: CBS San Francisco reports: KPIX 5 reporter Andria Borba said at least two Homeland Security units were responding. Police radio transmissions describe casualties being taken to local hospitals. San Francisco General Hospital spokesman Brent Andrew said the hospital received patients from the incident but could not confirm a number.
Update 21:20 GMT: ABC News is reporting that the suspected shooter is a white adult female, and that this is "leaning towards a workplace violence situation."
Update 21:30 GMT: Law enforcement has confirmed that the shooter was a white female dressed in a headscarf. The woman reportedly shot her boyfriend then herself. It's unclear exactly how many people have been injured, but early reports estimate at least 9-10 victims. There is no word on their conditions.
Update 03:10 GMT: ABC7 News is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. She reportedly had a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. Contrary to previous reports, she is said to have no relationship with anyone in the YouTube facility.
UPDATE 03:40 GMT: Aghdam's website can be found here.
Update 04:15 GMT: The shooter is believed to have known at least one of the victims, two law enforcement officials told CNN. Other sources suggest the shooter drove up from San Diego. YouTube says her YouTube channel "has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations."
Here is a timeline of events from our original post:
Police have responded to multiple 911 calls at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From a report: Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at the company, tweeted that there is an active shooter on campus. The San Bruno Police Department instructed people to stay away from 901 Cherry Avenue, where the company is located. Multiple 911 calls have been received from inside the building, according to a report from local news station KRON. In a Twitter thread, YouTube product manager Todd Sherman said that employees first thought there had been an earthquake. People began running out of their meetings, he said, but before reaching the exit, they got word that someone had a gun. Sherman said he saw blood on the floor and the stairs. He also said the shooter may have committed suicide. Vadim Lavrusik, who works at YouTube's products team, tweeted, "Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers."
Update 20:30GMT: Google has issued the following statement, "we are coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available." San Bruno Police said it was "responding to an active shooter. Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive."
Update 20:40 GMT: CBS San Francisco reports: KPIX 5 reporter Andria Borba said at least two Homeland Security units were responding. Police radio transmissions describe casualties being taken to local hospitals. San Francisco General Hospital spokesman Brent Andrew said the hospital received patients from the incident but could not confirm a number.
Update 21:20 GMT: ABC News is reporting that the suspected shooter is a white adult female, and that this is "leaning towards a workplace violence situation."
Update 21:30 GMT: Law enforcement has confirmed that the shooter was a white female dressed in a headscarf. The woman reportedly shot her boyfriend then herself. It's unclear exactly how many people have been injured, but early reports estimate at least 9-10 victims. There is no word on their conditions.
Update 03:10 GMT: ABC7 News is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. She reportedly had a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. Contrary to previous reports, she is said to have no relationship with anyone in the YouTube facility.
UPDATE 03:40 GMT: Aghdam's website can be found here.
Update 04:15 GMT: The shooter is believed to have known at least one of the victims, two law enforcement officials told CNN. Other sources suggest the shooter drove up from San Diego. YouTube says her YouTube channel "has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations."
>she doesn't come off as a mentally stable individual
why? Can you even describe your perception?
>Hopefully that will prove helpful in identifying other individuals who appear to be expressing at risk behavior and that we'll be able to figure out what can be done to treat whatever it is that's wrong with them.
Yeah hopefully this will provide some traction for freedoms to be curtailed further so we can force weird people into "treatment" just in case they decide to cash in their social contract in a way that scares you personally.
Everyone has a right to break the social contract. War is the default state of life. The original point of society is to group people together who don't want to fight each other. This society is trying to enslave and attack its members. They are fighting back when they have nothing to lose.
If you want people to stop breaking the social contract, see that their rights are maintained. Otherwise, expect war.
Since people like you exist as a majority, and since you're the kneejerking brainless authoritarians that you are, expect a LOT more war.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
basic human right like free speech
You've introduced that all on your own. I was countering the GPs rhetorical statement that violence/shootings was the only response to corporatism. They were arguing for revolution, I was making a case for evolution. I am arguing that looking for quick fixes, especially violent 'fixes' are unlikely to work on problems that have taken a long time to reach the point they have.
But to your point;
culture of censorship (youtube, twitter, facebook, any social media)
All of these are private organisations, not governments. Usually, censorship and free-speech arguments revolve around governments limiting speech. If I am in a friend's home and start criticising their choice in interior decoration, there's nothing to stop the friend asking me to leave - nor would this be considered censorship. If you don't like the rules that these social media services ask you to abide by, don't use them. If you've built a business, identity or way of life on or around a service over which you have no control and provided by someone with whom you have no contract then claiming you have some kind of 'right' is stretching the use of that term to something that it doesn't usually mean.
when that freedom is restricted people will strike back
What freedom do you see being restricted by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc.? How is that different from any company refusing to offer or to continue to offer a service if you refuse to abide by the terms of that service? Do you consider that these companies have some kind of obligation to provide you with a service on your terms? Do you equate being arrested for saying certain things with having your video rankings on Youtube lowered for saying those things and if so, why?
Laws follow culture
So do 'rights'. They are not universal. They are a kind of cultural axiom. 'We believe these truths to be self-evident ...' They cannot be argued because they are the foundation upon which arguments rest. But they can and do change.
Rights do not exist in a vacuum. Rights only exist when others agree to or with them. I see a lot of arguments about rights - demands for rights that have been infringed or abrogated, but very little about responsibilities. Demands for rights are very self-focussed. Responsibility tends to be about commitment to the community, society and culture in which you live. I see corporations as examples of rights over responsibilities - the right to profit without concern over the cost to community.
Until people stop demanding their rights and start working on their responsibilities, I'm not sure that the culture that has allowed these corporations to be successful is going to change. The US has some of the worst poverty; the greatest income inequality; the highest rate of incarceration with, at the same time, some of the worst racial imbalance in sentencing; worst healthcare outcomes of any other western country and in some statistics, are worse than traditionally totalitarian regimes and some third world countries. These have more to do with the violence you see and the talk of civil war than whether Youtube has stopped ranking your stream as highly as they did.
> There's no indication that she was a muslim, other than her Iranian origin. That's like assuming a East Asian gangster is a Buddhist kung-fu master without any other supporting fact.
Relevant if you ignore all fucking numbers in the universe.
98% of Iranians claim to be Muslim.
While East Asia does include some nations with a huge Buddhist majority, China is less than 20% Buddhist, and it will skew your numbers. But you didn't say East Asian, you said East Asian gangster, and you didn't specify Buddhist, you specified Buddhist kung-fu master.
The odds of your assumption being true are tiny. Assuming a given Iranian is Muslim is a pretty fucking safe bet: if you could make the bet 100 times, you'd be right 98 of those times, and the others are a rounding error.
Four hits, no kills, only herself. She's bad at this. Remember the Bernie supporter who opened fire on a baseball field full of Republicans? 50 shots fired, 5 hits, no kills.
Remember when some terrorists killed everyone at the Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas? That's OK, the Texans don't remember that either. The terrorists were shot and killed outside the event. They were wearing body armor, too. They were killed by head shots.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Her site is basically a collection of Reddit conspiracy theories. It's all personal, all a giant conspiracy against you and your ilk.
It's a common narrative even on Slashdot. It seems like the internet breeds this kind of warped, paranoid world view.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Her website screems "underf*cked & emotionally neglected avergage frustrated chump with a gun" only that this time the chump is a woman. Good to know that diversity is moving in on that territory aswell.
I hope no victim dies from the attack, AFAICT one victim still is critical.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Actually, if you consider the situation, it could have been much worse. From the body count alone, one can infer that this person was not using a semi-automatic rifle with high-muzzle velocity fragmentary rounds. With an AR-15 she may have killed a dozen people before killing herself.
With a little practice and a bolt action deer rifle it could have been much worse. Medium-caliber cartridges like the .223 / 5.56mm used in an AR-15 are chosen by the military for their tendency to wound, rather than always killing, because wounding one soldier tends to take two or three out of the fight as his buddies stop fighting to focus on saving him. Hunting rifles are designed to kill as quickly as possible, both to avoid game being able to run away and to ensure a quick, humane kill.
If you want to kill a lot of people with a gun, find a bunch of them in an open area with no easy way to cover and shoot them with a high-powered rifle from an elevated perch. Bolt action will work fine as long as the action is smooth and you've practiced a little.
If you want to kill a *lot* of people, though, you don't use a gun. Bombs and incendiaries are much more effective.
In this case, though, and in the majority of rampage shooting events, she used a handgun because it was small and easy to carry.
Also, all of the above-mentioned firearms are readily available in California. Magazine sizes are restricted for all types of firearms, some cosmetic features are restricted on ARs, and some effort has been made to make it difficult to swap rifle magazines quickly.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
When uneducated people talk about Fascism, they envision swastikas and marching stormtroopers. When educated people talk about Fascism, they talk about mandatory conformity to dogmatic ideas, threats of violence to enforce conformance, and lack of regard for individualism.
Your behavior fits my understanding of Fascism and I find it deeply ironic that you probably self-identify as anti-fascist.
I was guessing, that since a handgun was used, and it wasn't a 50yr old white guy with a problem, or a messed up kid, that it just didn't fit their current narrative that helps push the anti-gun movement currently in swing.
It's almost like the news is saying "Oh, well, wrong type of mass shooting".
That fact that it hit YouTube really shocks me, that it has dropped off the radar so soon, I figured the location alone would have made it a front page news item for at least a few days....?
Where's David Hogg now? Why aren't they running him out there now to speak out once again on gun violence?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Okay, so guns are made illegal in the US, then it's only the border states with gun problems. Only, the gun problems there are worse because criminals know their victims are unarmed and defenseless. Same amount of gun violence, just concentrated around the edges.
What you say is certainly true, but you need to follow it to its logical conclusion to see why it's not an argument for what you propose. Gun violence is more prevalent in Chicago than it is in the neighboring cities (where the guns are coming from) where people are allowed to be armed, because criminals know people in those cities might be armed and people in Chicago probably are not. Easier targets make for happier hunting.
My FIL is a customs agent, they find cars with trunks full of guns on a daily basis -- and they don't search everyone coming in, which means more are getting through than they're stopping. Getting rid of legal guns in the US won't stop that, because the illegal guns are coming from Mexico and (yes, really) Canada. Oh, and from overseas; they nab at least one shipping container a month full of them.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Medium-caliber cartridges like the .223 / 5.56mm used in an AR-15 are chosen by the military for their tendency to wound, rather than always killing, because wounding one soldier tends to take two or three out of the fight as his buddies stop fighting to focus on saving him.
This is outdated bullshit from WWII and has nothing to do with why we use the .223
Dude stop mashing together half ideas you heard from military wannabees at your gun club.
It's what I got from the training manuals I taught out of when I was a combat arms instructor in the US Air Force.
What's your source?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Boom. Mind blown. Brain matter all over the ceiling. Skull shrapnel everywhere.
Go on, dodge and weave. Spin it somehow that this one doesn't count. I'm sure you've got it in you.