YouTube Will Increase Security At All Offices Worldwide Following Shooting (theverge.com)

Following the shooting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California, yesterday, the company has announced plans to increase security at all of its offices worldwide. YouTube says this is intended to "make them more secure not only in the near term, but long-term." The Verge reports: The move reflects a growing concern in Silicon Valley that the effects of increasingly toxic and partisan online behavior may translate into violent offline actions. YouTube's statement was released through Google's Twitter account for communications; it's not clear whether Google itself will be implementing stronger security measures beyond YouTube. The shooter, 39-year-old Nasim Aghdam of San Diego, died yesterday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after shooting and injuring three employees. From police reports, testimony from Aghdam's family members, and extensive traces of the woman's online behavior on YouTube and other platforms, we now know that Aghdam was disgruntled over the demonetizing of her videos and harm to her financial well-being.

Comments

Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea. Do not remove the root of the problem (crappy content and tune the controversial argorithm), add more guns. Sounds familiar?

Re: Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats: " You don't need a gun because the police will protect you"

Democrats: "The police are murdering, racist pigs!"

clickbait & fad content policies

[Max_W]

Improving security is a good idea, however in the statement there is not a word about its content policies. Quite a few YouTube "celebreties" produce clickbait content and become "rich" and "famous".

In my opinion, YouTube shoud do more to encourage production of meaningful conent.

Re:Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

The loudest anti-gun people are always surrounded by people with guns (think Mike Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, etc.)

It's OK for them to have guns but not for you.

everywhere?

[Vranitzky]

There is no need to do it everywhere in the world. These things only happen in backward places like the US. No other country thinks that the way to solve mass shootings is by increasing weapons use (arming school officials?). The US is increasingly looking like an African dictatorship. Forward thinking states like California should just declare independence. The US army is useless anyhow, they haven't won a war for decades.

Re:everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you're right. I mean, its only bad places like the US with their Wild West mentality and lack of gun laws that have this horrific gun violence *cough*jesuischarlie*cough*. And in all the other paradyllic countries, no violence at all happens. No knife wielding psychopaths ever attack crowds of people, right? Certainly no one drives a truck 400 yards through a parade crowd in other countries!

I could go on but I hope you get the point. The problem is not guns, though they do make it easier. The problem is crazy people and/or people willing to do horrific things in the name of (insert cause here).

Also, this happened in California. She bought the gun in California. She practiced at a shooting range in California. She took the firearm and used it to murder people in California. California has some of the most restrictive firearms laws in the US, yes. What they don't have is free mental health care. What the US doesn't have is a mentality that needing help is acceptable and normal. We're all cowboys and rock stars and action heroes and we'll deal with our mental issues with drugs and alcohol and violence (and sex, can't forget the sex!) because 'Murica! And that needs to change too.

But you're not wrong. They don't need to add armed staff at all their buildings worldwide. Just the ones located in countries with people they are screwing over who might want to drive a car inside and say hello. Oh wait, guns won't stop that either. Guess this is probably just security theater to pacify their employees then and show they are "Taking this potential threat seriously" so everyone can get back to being properly productive!

Finally, following one best practice.

[Maxo-Texas]

When a large corporation fires/lays off hundreds to thousands of employees, it's a best practice to have armed police on business campuses for a period of time (months to even years).

Giving severance pay is another best practice..

So is giving advance notice that the change is coming (actually that's a legal requirement too).

So is having a meeting and giving some kind of explanation which shows respect for the employees and a reason why the change needs to take place and isn't arbitrary.

When youtube demonetizes content without warning, what they are doing is akin to a layoff.

Youtube could have reduced the likelihood of a shooting if they had:

Given 30, 60, or even 90 days notice that demonetization was coming.
Given "severance" pay based on the content creators historical income.
* To high income earners because they've done a lot for youtube in the past and they are less likely to get angry if youtube shows respect by giving severance.
* To low income earners because *it's very cheap* and generates a lot of good will.
* Distributed a video or -better- had a live conference where they explained why demonetization was necessary (advertisers refusing to pay for content, legal exposure to risk, etc.)
* Let everyone know that there would be armed uniformed police on campus starting immediately and continuing for for an unspecified period of time.

Instead, Youtub did it in a really roughshod way, with little explanation, no to almost no advance warning, and then expected, in a country full of gun owners and regular mass shootings, that nothing bad would happen.

I've been seeing youtube content creators posting upset videos for a while now.

I don't blame Youtube for demonetizing content. I just think they ignored best practices because they didn't see it as a layoff/firing of thousands of employees. And that is part of the reason their employees were shot.

Re:Finally, following one best practice.

[AmiMoJo]

When youtube demonetizes content without warning, what they are doing is akin to a layoff.

You hit the nail on the head. People started treating YouTube like their job, and I think there is actually a good argument that they should get some employment rights and protections.

The gig economy was largely about screwing works out of job security and benefits, and it has taken the law time to catch up and give people like Uber drivers some of the rights they deserve as effective employees.

YouTube is big enough to handle this. Initially when you suggested notice periods for demonetization I thought that advertisers would never go for that, but actually it doesn't matter. YouTube can afford to keep paying the ad revenue without showing the ads for a few months, the same severance pay.

Of course if you do something really bad you might get fired with no severance, and video removals / channel bans are still going to happen. Again, long established employment law exists to deal with this.

Re:Finally, following one best practice.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

People started treating YouTube like their job,

This sounds like extreme stalking to me . . . where folks in disillusion convince themselves that they are the "true love" of some Hollywood celebrity.

The YouTube film producers are no different from other artists . . . you create a painting . . . hang it in a gallery . . . and then someone buys it . . . or they don't.

and I think there is actually a good argument that they should get some employment rights and protections.

Did YouTube ever insinuate that they would have a job for life with YouTube? No, they are just like any other contractors . . . you make big bucks when you are needed . . . but have no long term commitments.

The gig economy was largely about screwing works out of job security and benefits, and it has taken the law time to catch up and give people like Uber drivers some of the rights they deserve as effective employees.

A lot of folks like doing contract work . . . if you are young and single, and understand the risks and can financially plan for them . . . it can be a great deal.

If you are married, with two kids to feed and a house to finance . . . well, maybe a steady job is better for you.

But at any rate, contributors to YouTube who think that they have a lifetime employment commitment at YouTube are idiots.

Re:Private businesses have the right to associate

[Max_W]

... create your own content portal or find another one that feels you are a good fit ...

It's impossible to create your own content portal like YouTube, because creating an organization like this requires thousands of qualified specialists, billions of investment into infrastructure and promotion, governmental support on external markets, and so on and so forth.

So it does have certain responsibility towards its content creators, society in general, including international community.

Or take away her gun

[Anonymous Coward]

So give in to a nut with a gun? Why not take away her her gun? Gun control in Australia slashed gun crimes. Trump might be shit scared on the NRA, but the kids in the schools aren't.

What's needed is gun control.

Re: Or take away her gun

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a license to drive a car. You need to show that you know the rules to abide by when driving, and that you have sufficient skill and knowledge to minimize the danger you pose to others when driving. This, US citizens are fine with.

But needing to show that you know the laws pertaining to gun ownership, that you understand gun safety both in usage and in storage before being allowed to own a gun, that they balk at. It boggles the mind.

Re: Or take away her gun

[BronsCon]

Nobody's proposing ending gun violence with more gun violence. Care to try again?

Here, I'll do it for you, then I'll respond to that as well; it'll save us both a post.

Yes because somehow car accidents can't be solved by more cars they same way gun violence can.

The problem isn't gun violence, it's violence and you don't solve it by taking away guns, because there are plenty of other ways to enact violence and the violent types will use them. Similarly, you don't solve humans being inattentive, or irresponsible, or simply being human and making mistakes, by taking away cars, because there are plenty of other ways in which humans are inattentive, irresponsible, or simply human and make mistakes.

I haven't heard a single person advocate for more guns, that's just a strawman your kind put up because you know nobody will defend it, because you're the one who said it in the first place. Go argue with yourself elsewhere, you're the reason we can't have reasonable gun laws in the first place and, as long as you keep at it, we'll never have gun laws that actually work.

Re: Or take away her gun

[blindseer]

You need a license to drive a car. You need to show that you know the rules to abide by when driving, and that you have sufficient skill and knowledge to minimize the danger you pose to others when driving. This, US citizens are fine with.

I'm not fine with it, and I'm an American citizen.

Licenses to drive are, in my opinion, a waste of money. We have traffic cops to make sure people know how to drive, so I don't know how having a piece of paper in the driver's pocket is supposed to improve things. What if a person doesn't have a license? How would anyone even know unless they broke the law? I don't care if people have licenses, I care that they follow traffic laws.

I know people would ask, how we would know people know the traffic laws before they drive? Well, we don't now. There's nothing that prevents an unlicensed driver from driving. We hear about unlicensed drivers all the time. These tend to be people that lost their license because they had a history of drunken driving, which just proves that taking a class which tells people not to drink and drive has questionable effectiveness. Another problem of unlicensed drivers are illegal aliens that want to minimize interactions with the government as that might mean they get deported. That's just a symptom of a greater problem. We saw states that tried to issue licenses to illegal aliens but that's just states giving implicit permission for people to break federal law. If the state KNOWS this person is in the country illegally and allows them to drive then the state government is aiding foreign invaders, and that sounds real close to treason to me.

We don't need licenses to drive. People should have to learn on their own how to not kill themselves while driving. I took a driver safety course in high school. That wasn't because it was required by law but because it was required by my parents. Maybe instead of licenses to drive we need parents that act like adults.

Oh, and we need states that find illegal aliens to notify the federal government. If you want safer streets then pick up all the illegal aliens that drive while having minimal knowledge of the traffic laws, or even minimal knowledge of the language spoken here. I don't care if they have a license to drive, that just tells me that the state that issued them doesn't enforce the law. If they are willing to give licenses to criminals (because entering the country without permission is a crime) then I have to wonder just how well the state enforced traffic laws.

Re:Or take away her gun

[Larry_Dillon]

No because she could have just as easily have ran over people in the parking lot with her car. Gun control will not stop violent people from finding a way to act out. It's treating a symptom and not the cause.

Re:Or take away her gun

[blindseer]

So give in to a nut with a gun? Why not take away her her gun?

Did anyone even know she had a gun? Did she show criminal tendencies in the past? Or have a history of poor mental health? I'll admit to ignorance here but I saw nothing on how she got the gun. As far as I know nobody knows yet how she got the gun and therefore nobody can claim any kind of gun control would have been effective.

Gun control in Australia slashed gun crimes.

And banning bridges would prevent people from jumping from them. I see your argument but I think it's a very stupid one.

How about instead of focusing on guns and "gun crime" we look at ALL CRIME? I've seen the argument before on how banning guns would prevent people from shooting themselves in suicides. That did happen in every nation in which it was tried, but total suicides didn't go down, people just found different ways to kill themselves. The problem here was a bat guano crazy lady that wanted to inflict physical harm on people at YouTube. If we find out how she go the gun and put in place a law against it then we'll just see some other kind of violence take its place. I see in Europe it has become popular to run people over with vehicles and slash people with knives, a gun ban didn't stop that. I don't see people calling for bans on vehicles. We did see some crazy laws on the buying of knives in some nations, where now people have to show ID and sign a log to buy a pizza cutter.

Trump might be shit scared on the NRA, but the kids in the schools aren't.

I don't believe Trump is scared of the NRA, he spoke at NRA conventions before. Trump and NRA leadership don't agree on everything but they seem to get along just fine. Seems to me that the school kids are scared of the NRA. They'll talk about how the NRA will get them killed. Well the NRA runs the most popular child gun safety programs and few people even know about it. They don't emblazon the NRA logo on the gun safety program because it's not about getting members, it's about keeping kids safe in school. The Brady Campaign likes to call themselves a "gun safety" organization but where are their animated cartoons telling kids to not touch a gun?

What's needed is gun control.

That's presuming an outcome not supported by the evidence. Alaska and New York have similar murder rates. We know why the murder rate in Alaska is so high, depression is a serious problem. That kind of happens in a place where the sun might shine for only three hours per day in the winter, and it's brutally cold. The state also attracts a lot of young men with not much better to do than turn a wrench on a far off oil well, or spend days at sea fishing. They get in fights, they get drunk, and they tend to kill each other. What's New York's excuse? Or London? London just passed New York City in the number of murders for the first time in a long time.

http://www.breitbart.com/londo...

What's London's excuse for such high rates of crime? They already banned all the guns? Are they going to ban them again? Maybe we need crime control to control the crime. Seems sensible to me.

Re: Or take away her gun

[Archangel Michael]

But needing to show that you know the laws pertaining to gun ownership, that you understand gun safety both in usage and in storage before being allowed to own a gun

One, the RIGHT to keep and bear arms is a right, like voting is a right. Change "gun ownership" to "Voting" and "gun safety" to "Constitutional law" and you'll start to see where the problem is in your logic.

BTW, I consider VOTING to be far more dangerous than owning a fire arm. People voting to take away my liberty and property is a huge problem that most liberals have no problem with. The passions of the people stirred is why democracies are inherently dangerous to liberty, and why we need constraining documents to control the powers of the collective.

Not that any socialist would understand.

Re:Toxic people are damaging to the brand.

[Q-Hack!]

Visible, yes... monetized, no.

Re:Toxic people are damaging to the brand.

[sycodon]

There is a very popular channel (Deermeatfordinner) that is run by a very nice family guy, talks about doing good, participates in charity events, fishes, hunts, and cooks.

Youtube has demonetized most of his hunting videos. They have even deleted some. Essentially, anything that shows how to clean and butcher an animal. But not fish. You can show all the fish guts want and Youtube doesn't care.

Youtube is apparently an uncoordinated collection of SJWs who pretty much hate anything and anyone who isn't like them responding to other SJWs flagging videos because they anything and anyone who isn't like them.

Anyone with a few million bucks to spare could probably steal their market away practically overnight I bet.

Vimeo needs to step up. There's market share up for grabs.

Re:Theirtube

[JudgeFurious]

Indeed and when I first heard there was a shooting there my first thought was "Please don't let this be one of the gun channel people". It wasn't of course. Just a peaceful California vegan/animal rights activist nut bar angry over not enough people getting to see her homemade music and bunny rabbit videos.

Youtube: Protected by men with guns...

[Eldragon]

...but don't post any videos about guns.

So let me get this straight.

[shm]

An anti-gun company is going to add security, ie guns.

While demonetising the NRA which didn't shoot them up.

Because a vegan leftist nut job shot them up?

Re:Nope

[BronsCon]

There basically is no place in the world where is as easy to legally get a gun as in the US

Fixed that for you. Due to smuggling, it's basically equally easy to get a gun in illegally in any industrialized nation. If it weren't, we should expect there to be literally zero gun crime in countries where it is difficult or impossible to legally obtain a gun, but there is no place in the world with zero gun crime. Funny how that works out.

Re:It is not about SJW but solely about advertisin

[Anon-Admin]

On the other hand animals which people see as "cute" could damage the brand if seen associated. So no it isn't about SJW or whatever , it is most probably in this case solely about not putting advertiser in a bind.

Right, it is not like there would be say sporting goods suppliers as advertisers, or knife manufacturers, the NRA, Gun Sellers, sellers of meat processing items, etc, etc.