Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Employees Who Worked at YouTube Say Violent Threats From Volatile 'Creators' Have Been Going on For Years (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the real-problem dept.

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.

4 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. narcissistic personality disorder by Martin+S. · · Score: 4, 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/...

    1. Re:narcissistic personality disorder by Anonymous Coward · · 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 corrupting influence.

      But not all politicians have this specific disorder. The varieties of evil are endless.

    2. Re:narcissistic personality disorder by quantaman · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      I stole this Sig
  2. Re: Given the way Youtube acts no surprise by Anonymous Coward · · 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

    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".