Employees Who Worked at YouTube Say Violent Threats From Volatile 'Creators' Have Been Going on For Years (businessinsider.com)
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 (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/...
It's really unfair to threaten employees..
Go after the C*O's or stockholders, they're the ones making the decisions, not the poor sods that work for minimum wage to put food on the table for their families.
Is this surprising at all? I'm sure that random death threats have been getting lobbed around since antiquity. It's just easier now.
Unstable people with real need for professional help sometimes end up harming themselves and other people when given easy access to guns.
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.
Then get a fucking day job like the rest of us losers.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Looks like some pre attack shelling to soften up the ground by ambulance chasers. rats ... ambulance chasers... all same
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
One incident - harbringer, two incident - trend, three incidents - national catastrophe
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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 arbitrarily cuts off people's income streams without explanation or any transparency in the process, no great surprise they get death threats.
Really amazing that they haven't had more people go berzerk on them.
Learn to recycle.
Humans are fuel for the AIs.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
This stuff with YouTube is not new. Back before that, when cable TV had public access stations, and $DEITY knows what crazies wanted their stuff played on a public access cable station, there were always more people than slots, so some of the people who got turned away, often went crazy with threats. I remember a security guard being put in at the station because someone wrote the producer names on bullets and mailed them in.
So basically APK, but without the schizophrenic rants.
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.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Notice this part in the summary?
Just in case there are any insane people here, let's a review a little common sense:
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.
The persons "making the decisions" was the shooter herself, so she did the most logical thing (within the insane context!) by killing herself, since she had all the power and she was causing her problems. I'm not saying this is a good solution, but if you have a constraint that someone has to be killed, that is the best answer.
But she selected some random innocent people who were completely unrelated to her problem, and shot them. Your advice that she should have picked some different random people who were unrelated to her problem, would not have actually helped her cause. (Why the C*Os? Why shouldn't she shoot a gas station attendant, or her neighbor, or a celebrity/politician, or a lover, or different people who happened to be around Youtube's office at the time? All of those answers are interchangably just a good/bad as the people she selected.)
What you're missing is that the whole shoot-random-people part of the plan was flawed; it didn't merely need some tuning. I would remove the someone-needs-to-be-killed constraint from the solution. (You can still kill someone, just don't prejudicially decide that before you've thought about the problem.)
Her more basic problem is that she was disconnected from reality and thought she had a censorship problem at all. She probably could have fixed everything, just by talking to someone about what censorship is, the total optional-ness take-it-or-leave-it terms she had in her relationship with Youtube, etc. If she had stopped to think about any of this, it probably never would have occurred to her to shoot anyone, not even herself!
Apeshit was the wrong play. And indeed, I think a pattern is emerging where every time someone does that, we tend to look down on them once we find out how stupid their "reasons" were. (Can anyone think of an exception? I'm drawing a blank. What person went apeshit and then later everyone said, "That was a good call"?)
That's like yelling at the cashier at the store, or burning down your own neighborhood during a riot.
No, to be effective, you go after the decision makers and bosses. Make them feel the pain for being assholes. Nobody, least of all the boss, cares about the staffers. They'll be replaced with a lower wage worker.
If you're business model attracts crazies by offering them free money, perhaps you should come up with a different business model?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's tragic, but not exactly a new phenomenon.
Almost a decade ago, I used to work for a mid-sized videogame development studio. After we released a new version of a popular FPS shooter, we were DELUGED with threats to murder us and our families because we hadn't made it exactly like the previous version.
It began with emails and phone calls. We went through six front desk admins in three months who had to go on stress leave after handling hundreds of abusive and threatening phone calls per day, often reducing them to tears.
We had employees get stalked on FB and social media and harassed there. We had one disgruntled "fan" make dozens of YouTube videos, doxxing employees and encouraging other "fans" to track them down in person and kill them.
Fortunately, we didn't publish our address so there was no easy way for someone to find us in person, or so I thought.
At one point, I was standing outside our office when a police cruiser pulled up, a cop gets out of the car and asks, "Do you guys work for X?" We said we did. Cop then unholsters his service weapon and suggests that we shouldn't piss off loyal fans like himself. He then gets back in his cruiser and tears off. I got the car's ID number and called the PD to report the incident and was told not to waste their time over a videogame.
The Internet is the ultimate accelerant for toxic narcissism and the only surprising thing is that more people aren't murdered more regularly.
Or an explosives expert she probably would have done less damage. Contrary to what the internet would have you believe handling explosives isn't as easy as you think. Especially for crazy people. And a 120lb woman with a knife just isn't a threat.
Like everything else, guns are best when they're legal, taxed and regulated. We got the first two, it's time for #3.
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If the purpose of guns is to kill people, then nearly every gun has been used wrong, nearly every time. Guns are so rarely used for their purpose, that you're only slightly exaggerating if you say they're never used for their purpose.
Purely from empirical analysis, I have strong evidence that the purpose of guns is to put holes in paper targets.
Ergo, empirical analysis is the wrong way to understand guns. So.. what do we use, when we're unable to learn from experience (since experience gives us the result that guns' purpose is to poke holes in paper)?
There's one answer that stands tall above all the rest: mysticism. We have faith that guns are meant to kill people, and fuck everyone who counts how many times who fired at what!
Hahaha +1 informative!
creimer's "Dr. Mae C. Jemison" video already went from 250 views to 80 views!!!!
creimer views go down instead of up because he uses a click bot on his youtube channel and youtube removes the views!!
What a dumb fuck! He should get barred from youtube soon, just like he was barred from /.! ;-)
UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous "ne'er-do-well" you show symptoms of uncurable jealous loser disorder!
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.
creimer's "Dr. Mae C. Jemison" video already went from 250 views to 80 views!!!!
YouTube is changing the algorithm from views to click through views to foil click bots. Roberto Blake did a live stream on the new change.
creimer views go down instead of up because he uses a click bot on his youtube channel and youtube removes the views!!
Philip DeFranco's videos are getting 300K to 450K less views and he may leave YouTube after being on the platform for a decade.
What a dumb fuck! He should get barred from youtube soon, just like he was barred from /.! ;-)
Creimer got banned on Slashdot after posting his April Fool's Day paraody video. Slashdot management doesn't have a sense of humor. They certainly didn't celebrate April Fool's Day as it has been celebrated on Slashdot for years.
Don't trust small media. Trust big media. Small media violent. We have "report from anonymous reader" for proof.
Short story: creimer admits he runs a click bot!
Then, he comes bragging on Slashdot about his view count while no human really watches his digi-feces videos!
He still has only 14 subscribers and there is no comments in his video comment sections.
Only click bots go to creimer youtube channel!
--
Balena!
Conservatives who are in certain groups received death threats all the time from dangerous liberals
They should be worried that the policies created can cause a physical violence backlash. There is always that threat and this is needed. Dont want to get killed? Then dont make bad decisions.
Simple as that.
Guns are like Bittorrent. The primary use of bittorrent is copy infringement. I'd guess just 10% of bittorrent use is legal. Nobody here would say that bittorrent needs to be outlawed.
OTOH, firearms are used daily, safely, legally, all over the USA with a tiny amount of illegal use in comparison.
Same for cars, except I bet everyone driving a car today used it illegally. I did. I drove 50 mph in a 45 mph zone. I also drove 30 mph in a school zone! Cars need to be removed from our hands, since we obviously can't be trusted with them. Only law enforcement and the military should have vehicles. Plus, there are many more deaths by cars than bittorrent or guns. Cars are evil.
See the flaw in the logic?
Bad people can kill others many different ways.
BTW, over 50% of gun deaths in the USA are by suicide. Crazy people will find a way to kill themselves, if that is their intent. A friend of mine committed suicide. No warning. He used a gun. OTOH, my father starved himself to death. We had about 20 days of warning.
Short story: creimer admits he runs a click bot!
Short story: creimer hurt your covfefe and the Slashdot community doesn't give a shit anymore.
He still has only 14 subscribers and there is no comments in his video comment sections.
You must have missed the pissing and moaning comments for Stan Lee (video 1, video 2 and video 3) and Christina Ricci.
Only click bots go to creimer youtube channel!
For the Slashdot parody video, 800+ clicks from Slashdot in 17 days. Onward to 1K+ views!
...that fucking over vast numbers of people with opaque rules applied arbitrarily with no recourse might result in angry randoms?
Shocking, I know.
If you live in or near a major city there's one every couple weeks. No background checks whatsoever.
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https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-fire-susan-wojcicki-as-youtube-ceo
yeah dude! this creimertard obviously doesn't know how to count comments!
CROFLOL!
creimer has already managed to cluster fuck on youtube and creimer youtube channel already begins to look like slashdot where he is the king creimy-dumpty!
Here is one user comment about creimer on creimer youtube channel (calling creimer stupid):
once again another youtuber looking stupid like i said i got the email from registration confirming his was coming youtube is fake news.?
Then creimer replies:
C.D. Reimer
C.D. Reimer
12 hours ago (edited)
If you think I look stupid now, wait until you see my next video as I retrace what happened.
1) The Daily Beast comes out with a detailed article describing Stan Lee's troubles.
2) Stan Lee cancels ComicCon Asia in Manila (third consecutive comic con cancellation).
3) Stan Lee's profile and ticket listings are taken down from SVCC website without explanation, which was what happened when Jeff Goldblum cancelled.
4) No confirmation or denial from SVCC for a whole week, rumors and speculation run rampant.
5) Stan Lee's Facebook video was his first public communication since late February.
If you want to scream fake news, complain to the SVCC organizers who pulled Stan Lee's profile (still missing) and ticket listings, refused to communicate about what was going on their own Facebook page, and had to get Stan Lee to save their asses from the problems that they created.?
CROFLOL!
CROFLOL! CROFLOL!
Just like slashdot! : complain to management, I ain't responsible for my own fuck-ups since I am a fat retard, please still keep clicking on my stupid links although, etc. etc.
--
Balena!
C.D. Reimer
12 hours ago (edited)
If you think I look stupid now, wait until you see my next video as I retrace what happened.
Hey creimer! So, you promise to look even more stupid in your next video? OK, I'll watch it then.
Also, I see "12 hours ago (edited)" above. You must enjoy the edit functionality allowing you to re-arrange your reality at will, you delusional fucktard!
Creimer is gone. Shtposting your creimer fantasies is just pissing everyone else off. Get professional help before it's too late.
Shhhh! Keep that name quiet! Only few people have ever heard that name. Even fewer know the legend of The 400 Pound Virgin, his low-carb diet that defied physics, his 475 square foot child bride dungeon, his monstrous narcissism, and his uncle, Chuck "Bugfucker" Reimer.
There are still people who claim they were at the gym when the industrial-grade veterinary scale *thunked* at 400 pounds. There are people who read a creimer ebook. Someday, the doctors say, they might once again be able to walk and clothe themselves.
Legends talk of ten thousand Slashdot karma points and thousands upon thousands of posts! While normal men married, had careers, had kids, and bought houses, creimer never wavered from his dream of being the most unknown Slashdotter that ever was.
He had an author blog, a personal blog, a website, a YouTube channel, and still no woman wanted to kiss him.
He was a wizard at the DMCA takedowns though. Like the mythical Squonk, no one has ever captured a creimer alive, they always dissolve into a puddle of lard.
A puddle of lard.
A lot of these "tech campus locations" are wide open. It's suppose to be open, encourage creativity bla bla bla. You see some of the same going into some public schools. This "open space" approach can make it too easy for a NUT JOB to cause havoc.
I for one would not want to make "Diamond and Silk" angry ...
deserved. People are stupid. STOP CONTRIBUTING TO THE PROBLEM. Setup your own systems and promote that. Now it's not helping that the government has ensured (and I'm sure Google encourages) creators have few alternative avenues because every other company that could compete has either been shut down or targeted by the entertainment industry. Whats sad about this is that copy"right" was supposed to be a limited 7-year monopoly to promote the arts and sciences for the benefit of the people. After which works were suppose to hit the public domain. What has happened in practice is we have got indefinite monopolies and those monopolies are mostly benefiting the wealthy rather than the creators upon which the excuse exists to justify what was suppose to otherwise be illegal. That is a monopoly. In fact in the early days of the United States it was illegal to operate a businesses in more than one state let alone the sorts of operations we have today. I'm not against corporations- but I am against copy"right". I don't believe anybody has the right to to censor or demand from you anything that you haven't yourself consented to. While you can make a contract with a party not to disclose a copy of your work that he pays for that contract can't extend to someone once that person violates said contract. So the vast majority of the claims of against "infringers" have no merit. This is by the way coming from someone who has multiple businesses built of funding and direct development of content. One does not need to enforce copy"right" to profit handsomely from creation of content. I'll refrain from providing my name- but many people here would probably recognize me. I'm a reasonably well known personality across the United States and around the world even.
and I advocate gun control too. Youtube and other private corporations are privatizing every law at the,adminiatrative level and bypassing the Constitution. Therefore, we notice every corporation executive and employee upto no-good and demanding to be protected by the same.
They don't deserve death by firing squad, or shooter: they deserce death by butter knife like the censored Christians in Philipines slaughtered by machetes for advocating one non-native religion over another non-native religion. It's the privileged censoring is what earns youtube staff each DEATH by dull blades, because sharp blades and bullets are too merciful.
all lived, all walked out of the hospital. As shootings go it was barely even a blip. It only made the news because it happened at Youtube and the women is kinda odd looking.
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That nasim whore was useless, she did not kill ANYONE but made it difficult to do the same just better, due to increased security now
But there is hope: you can still CHARLIE HEBDO google, jewtube, facebook, twatter, without mercy and plenty of torture. If their offices are protected, their buses are not. The employees and managers homes and families are not protected enough. Storm those and kill them all. Torture, violence, ALL ON HD VIDEO
Dont be the next useless vegan whore: exterminate a silicon valley company employees and home and buses but KILL THEM.
Look that canard get touted by gun fans every time. I am sorry this is wrong. There is a reason we progressed as weapon from blunt object, to less blunt object (stone axe, stone spear, some bows) to bronze weapon and far weapon(spear, sword, arrow & bow) to iron weapon, it was a progress. WHY the FUCK do you think no FUCKING army in the world are still using ANYTHING BUT guns. I am sorry for the caps but I am screaming here. Because it is highly inefficient to use anything but a gun/riffle you dolt. With a non distance weapon you got to go to your target, target can dodge, can use other object to protect, can use arm (and yes get wounded) to defend, can run away (with a gun or riffle this is not always a winning proposition - much much harder to stab somebody with a knife while that person is running away). You don't necessarily die from 1 stab either, so while that person is trying to stab you passerby can stop her. And I pass many other. Saying that person could have killed as many or even 1 person if she had no access to gun is the most quasi lie that gun proponent keep touting. Is anybody swallowing that lie I do wonder? Or are you convincing yourself ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Hush, coppertop.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, yeah. If you have a system where your end user is the product people will react badly. Google ignores customers which means:
* Some will give up and continue to use the platform
* Some will use it less
* Some will complain to friends
* Some will be vocal and actively boycott
* Some will be violent regardless of religion, sex or race.
1st amendment vs commercial speach facilities monetized by Youtube? What if someone else had conyrol of what menu items appeared on your restaurant; and your landlord says you can only sell snowcones and icecream in the winter not summer because 'tis thr availability like how clam chowder eaten durring poisonous tidea are suggestive bad reputation. where do you buy your snowcones and icecream served in Death Valley because it doesn't look fair to imported Ben'n'Jerries.
>>>You have nailed it that it is those people that would attack the Youtube staffers instead of being grateful they have a platform.
wah wah wahhhhh.
>>>I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis, however the traits are there.
this is about youtube competing to eBay, preventing what can't be sold. i would pretend to be narcicist too for 1-cent of every 100 views. gtfo faggot, rights violated by jewtube. stop protecting corporations agenda an NSA agent employees pretending their agenda. We would have blue and green Peeps for easter too if it weren't for you faghhhotttts.
>>>Youtube took their narcissistic supply away from them, caused them an un-excusable narcissistic injury, they felt entitled to retribution.
So this is a great example of how a NPD interacts. First thing you notice is that they interact at a teenage level where their emotional development ended. They're so injured by the very idea of someone taking their supply that this one can't even spell properly.
wah wah wahhhhh.
This part demonstrates how the NPD has no capacity to interact in such a way to defend the rights they claim to be entitled to so they resort to trying to provoke an emotion response.
i would pretend to be narcicist too for 1-cent of every 100 views.
This is what an NPD needs to validate their world view about themselves. They're so desperate for attention because of the love their father didn't give them and from their mothers telling them they're special. Inside their heads a voice incessantly pesters them about how worthless they are.
gtfo...
Here you can see how desperately boring the NPD is. They don't have anything to offer so they resort to trying to trigger emotional responses. This one displays NPD traits with an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance that no-one but himself can see. The rest of the world just sees a loser.
Generally, I just ignore them, which hurts them the most however you can go as far as triggering a full blown nervous breakdown in them. Generally I wouldn't waste my time however for anyone still reading this thread this AC comment is a good example of how classic NPD abuse is conducted, they can't help themselves.
I suggest this one will be punished by their own ego for failing to get a response as expected, which can be so brutally punishing that they fall into a deep depression sometimes for days and weeks. They may find themselves trapped into risking a response that invites much more of the type of psychological torture they like to inflict or putting up with the punishment from the ego and acknowledging to themselves again that they are worthless.
Either way from what I've seen they inevitably validate their own ego's punishment of themselves for not securing the attention they covet so the voices in their head end up going on and on louder and louder torturing them for being such a loser and knowing it.
Don't feel sorry for them, that's how they want leave their victims.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.