YouTube Shooter Nasim Aghdam Was Crazy
The woman who wounded three people at the video company before killing herself posted insane rants all over social media.
Nasim Aghdam went on a shooting spree at YouTube yesterday. In hindsight, it’s not the least bit surprising.
NYT (“YouTube Shooting: Woman Wounds 3 Before Killing Herself, Police Say“):
Chief Ed Barberini of the San Bruno Police Department said at a news conference that three victims had been transported away with gunshot wounds. He had previously indicated that there were four shooting victims; the discrepancy stemmed from the fact that at least one person was injured while fleeing the building but not shot.
The gunshot victims were taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center in San Francisco. Brent Andrew, a spokesman for the hospital, said at a news conference that a 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, which owns YouTube, said in a statement late Tuesday afternoon that Google was “doing everything we can to support them and their families at this time.”
The police found a woman, believed to be the attacker and later identified as Ms. Aghdam, dead in the building from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Social media postings associated with her included a video in which she criticized YouTube.
Chief Barberini said that the suspect had used a handgun, and that there was no evidence of a second attacker.
Ms. Aghdam’s gender is noteworthy because mass shootings are almost always perpetrated by men. An F.B.I. study released in 2014 found that, from 2000 to 2013, women were responsible for only six of 160 mass shootings in the United States.
LAT (“Authorities probe whether woman who opened fire at YouTube had grudge against video platform“):
A woman opened fire at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., shooting three people with a handgun before taking her own life and causing widespread panic in the technology hub south of San Francisco.
San Bruno police identified the shooter as Nasim Aghdam, 39, a San Diego resident.
Investigators initially believed the shooting was a domestic incident, with the shooter targeting someone who worked on the YouTube campus. But San Bruno police said in a release late Tuesday that “there is no evidence that the shooter knew the victims of this shooting or that individuals were specifically targeted.”
One law enforcement source said the investigation is now looking into a website that appears to show the same woman complaining about YouTube stifling traffic and suppressing videos. The source stressed that the investigation is in its preliminary stages.
“Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” reads the site, which along with complaints about the streaming video service includes videos promoting veganism and photos of a woman in an array of outfits, including long dresses and a camouflage unitard.
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!”
Social media accounts linked from the page were deactivated late Tuesday.
A YouTube account linked from the page was “terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations,” according to the streaming video site.
About two weeks ago, Aghdam vented to her family that YouTube stopped compensating her for her videos, her father told the Bay Area News Group.
Ismail Aghdam said that the family had called police to report his daughter missing Monday because she hadn’t answered her phone for two days. He said he had told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company.
He told the news agency he knew nothing about her owning a gun.
As is typical in these events, people filled the gaps in available information with their pre-existing biases. For example:
ThinkProgress (“Dana Rohrabacher immediately links shooting at YouTube to ‘illegal aliens’“):
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) appeared on Fox Business Network amid breaking news reports of a shooting at YouTube headquarters on Tuesday afternoon.
The interview occurred less than an hour after the shooting, before authorities provided any official information about the identity of the shooter. Nevertheless, the congressman immediately linked the shooting to “criminal illegal aliens.”
“You were going to talk to me about sanctuary cities and the sanctuary state movement, and it fits right into what you are talking about right now,” Rohrabacher said. “Would anyone be surprised?”
“Would anyone listening to you right now say: ‘Well, this certainly wouldn’t be an illegal immigrant,'” he continued. “It could be!”
Rohrabacher said the shooting proved that “[a]ny illegal in this state should be sent back whether he’s a criminal or not.”
His comments went unchallenged on the air.
“Congressman, you bring up an excellent point,” the Fox Business host said, before teeing up an interview with an eyewitness who helped a YouTube employee who was shot in the incident.
That spree shooters are essentially never illegal aliens apparently never occurred to anyone on the set. Then again, they’re almost never women, either.
One the shooter’s identity was revealed, it became pretty easy to fill in the gaps. Spoiler alert: she was crazy.
The San Jose Mercury News (“YouTube shooter’s father says she was angry at company“):
The night before Nasim Aghdam opened fire in a courtyard at YouTube’s headquarters Tuesday afternoon, Mountain View police found the San Diego woman sleeping in her car.
She had been reported missing by her family in Southern California, and her father Ismail Aghdam told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company. Police called the family at 2 a.m. Tuesday to say she’d been found and that everything was “under control,” her father said.
But hours later, his daughter was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot after shooting three people and causing an afternoon of terror at YouTube’s headquarters.
In an interview Tuesday night with the Bay Area News Group, Ismail Aghdam said his 38-year-old daughter told her family a couple of weeks ago that YouTube had been censoring her videos and stopped paying her for her content. “She was angry,” he said in an interview from his Riverside County home.
It wasn’t clear Tuesday night what Mountain View police knew about her history with YouTube.
A police spokeswoman confirmed that officers had found a woman of the same name asleep in a vehicle early Tuesday morning in a parking lot.
“Our officers made contact with the woman after the license plate of her vehicle matched that of a missing person out of Southern California,” said Mountain View Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson.
“The woman confirmed her identity to us and answered subsequent questions. At the conclusion of our discussion, her family was notified that she had been located.”
Ismail Aghdam said his daughter was a vegan activist and animal lover. As a youngster, she would not even kill ants that invaded the family home, instead using paper to remove them to the back yard, he said. State records show she had once established a charity called Peace Thunder Inc., to “educate people about animal cruelty, environmental pollution” and other causes.
“For me, animal rights equal human rights,” Aghdam told the San Diego Union-Tribune at a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest in 2009 outside Camp Pendleton.
She told her family that YouTube had stopped paying her for the content she posted to the site, Ismail Aghdam said. YouTubers can receive payment for advertisements accompanying their videos, but the company “de-monetizes” some channels for various reasons, meaning ads don’t run with them.
Aghdam was prolific on social media, posting videos and photos on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Her YouTube channel included strange workout video clips, graphic animal abuse videos and vegan cooking tutorials. But recent posts show evidence of her growing frustration.
Aghdam’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram pages were all taken down late Tuesday, but not before reporters from this news organization were able to view much of the material.
On a March 18 Instagram post, she railed at YouTube: “All my youtube channels got filtered by youtube so my videos hardly get views and it is called “merely relegation.” This is also happening to many other channels on youtube. This is the peaceful tactic used on the internet to censor and suppress people who speak the truth and are not good for the financial, political … gains of the system and big businesses. I recently got filtered on instagram too and maybe its related to youtube and youtube staff asked instagram to filter me here too!!?”
On Jan. 28, Aghdam recorded a video of herself lamenting her perceived “discrimination” by YouTube, particularly railing on how YouTube determined her ab workout video was too racy and, therefore, filtered it.
“I’m being discriminated and filtered on YouTube and I’m not the only one,” the video begins, as Aghdam, wearing a black, white and orange long-sleeved shirt and short jet black hair stands in front of a background of green and white stars. “They age restricted my ab workout video. A video that has nothing bad in it. Nothing sexual.”
On one of her many websites, she claims to have at least four YouTube channels, one in English, and then others in Farsi and Turkish.
A law enforcement source on Tuesday afternoon said investigators were looking into whether she may have been targeting a boyfriend, however San Bruno Police late Tuesday night confirmed she was the attacker but said investigators were trying to determine her motive.
“At this time there is no evidence that the shooter knew the victims of this shooting or that individuals were specifically targeted,” the department said in a press release.In the interview with this news organization, her father said the family knew nothing about Nasim owning a gun. “Maybe she bought one” recently, he said.
Nasim’s brother, Shahran Aghdam, spoke to reporters from the foyer of the family’s home in Menifee in Riverside County on Tuesday night. His mother could be heard crying in the home and his father asked one reporter about the condition of the victims.
The family came to California from Iran in 1996, Shahran said. He said Nasim had been living recently with her grandmother in San Diego. “She was always complaining that YouTube ruined her life,” he said.
BuzzFeed (“This Is What We Know About YouTube Shooter Nasim Aghdam“) has an extensive collection of screen captures from Aghdam’s social media profiles. While my doctorate is not in a mental health field and even mental health professionals are well-advised not to diagnose people from afar, I’m going to go out on a limb and assess her to have been a raving lunatic.
As in so many of these cases, however, it’s not obvious what we could have done about it beforehand. Lots of people post strange things on social media platforms. It’s not clear when she bought the gun but I don’t know on what basis we’d have denied her the right to buy one. Absent the additional bit of evidence that she engaged in a public shooting spree before taking her own life, there would have been no reason to think she was a danger to herself or others.
UPDATE: See my follow-up post “Confirmation Bias, Hidden Agendas, and the Challenges of Conversation.”
Now if only she’d had an AR-15.
Quick thoughts:
1. Calling her “crazy” doesn’t help. Millions of US citizens have mental health issues. Few are murderous.
2. Her mental state alone wouldn’t have led to the shooting of three people without access to a gun. While you are certainly correct that, under the current legal framework, it would have been difficult to deny her access, that framework is not inviolate. An actual licensing scheme that requires a mental health evaluation and/or proof of insurance for the damage caused by a firearm you wish to purchase might have.
@SKI:
No insurance company is going to insure against deliberate use of a firearm in a case such as this.
@SKI: An actual licensing scheme that requires a mental health evaluation
You know what would improve public life? A licensing scheme that requires a mental health evaluation before you are allowed to drive. And I’m sure there are a bunch of other activities where having to prove your mental fitness before doing them would also be a net positive.
Mike
@Doug Mataconis:
Why not?
If we make having insurance a requirement for possession of a gun – same way we make it a requirement to own/use a car), there will be a market for selling such insurance.
Now, I’m pretty sure that the rate to insure will vary based on factors – the same way all non-health insurance does and that there will be discounts/premiums/requirements that align with the actuarial risks.
Keep your guns in a gun safe at a shooting range and not the house? Lower premium (and possibly subsidized/insured by the gun club/shooting range).
Want to open carry a loaded AR-15? Higher premium.
Pass your mental health exam with flying colors? low premium?
Fixated on people who have wronged you and have a history of substance abuse and/or domestic violence? You may be uninsurable.
Basically this gets the government out of the deciding who gets to own guns and turns it over to the free market. Also assigns the costs of the risks incurred to the actual gun owner/user – not the victims or society. Figured that would appeal to a libertarian like you.
@MBunge: Like commenting on a blog.
just. couldn’t. resist.
@MBunge: Hence my preference for a license that is based on having insurance (and having passed some form of training/certification).
@MBunge: It’s actually not a terrible idea, but I’m afraid very few men would be allowed to drive, then.
@SKI: Thought-provoking if nothing else!
Yup. Her name wasn’t something like Jennifer or Mary or something, so she was clearly an illegal immigrant Islamic terrorist. Probably a feminazi lesbian, too, since she shot a man. Did I miss anything?
You forgot CNN saying that the motivation for the shooting was “perhaps a love triangle.”
@SKI”
Excepts it’s a money pit. The payouts on the inevitable violence would not cover costs, let alone make anyone a profit. There’s just not enough gun owners in the US to make it work; 90% of household own at least one car but 30% own at least one gun. Hell, about 2-3% own half the country’s private arms! Add in that these people tend to not be wealthy, to be honest. They’re more likely to say screw it and be illegal.
Economically, it’s just not going to work with government backing and then the 2A screaming starts. I like the idea but there’s a reason it doesn’t already exist. In capitalist America, people have looked at the finances and decided it’s a suckers bet.
Ha, ha, falling into our trap … and that’s when we finally get to confiscate all of them!
/flashes smug liberal grin
@KM: Almost by definition, the money has to work. That is how actuarial calculations that set premiums.
It doesn’t work today because it isn’t mandated and therefore the irresponsible gun owners can transfer their costs/risks onto victims and society. If we require insurance, it not becomes incumbent on the insurance company (not the government) to set the risk levels they can tolerate for a certain premium.
Yes, it will price out some settings/situations because they are too costly to insure but that is kinda what we want, no? Sorry Joe but you can’t store your loaded handgun under your pillow with a toddler in the house unless you want to increase your monthly premium by a few thousand.
I think that the FBI needs to investigate whether Nasim Aghdam is really this person.
Pretty sure that if an insurance for guns mandate was proposed you would get an anodyne mealy mouthed response from the insurance industry expressing neither objections nor support for it, only that the devil will be in the details. The NRA however would come out guns blazing against the lieberal assault on American values and freedoms.
That would tell us all we need to know about it.
@MBunge: You know what would improve public life? A licensing scheme that requires a mental health evaluation before you are allowed to drive.
You do actually have to go to the registry of motor vehicles and demonstrate that you can drive a car. I’ve not tested the theory, but if you went there and proved to be a gibbering lunatic, presumably you wouldn’t be approved.
In Massachusetts, which has nearly the lowest firearm death rate in the country (second only to Hawaii), you need to get a license from your local police department if you want to keep a gun at home.
@SKI:
Let us start with the common sense Gun Safety Reform of banning Registered Democrats from owning or possessing guns.
Democrats need to campaign on Abolishing the Second Amendment and a National Gun Registry.
@Donald Sensing: Oh. my. Gawd. That is terrifying.
@Paul L.: Why?
Very, very few Democrats support abolishing gun ownership or eliminating the Second Amendment.
Don’t confuse your fevered fantasies with reality…
@SKI: he’s repeating the long since debunked right-wing lie that all mass shooters are registered Democrats.
@Monala:
The Democrats support Gun Control. Give them what they support. Registered Republicans can show Voter ID.
Your and the MSM narrative: The GOP Baseball shooter was an independent who was targeting politicians.
Most Democrats like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens believe that the Second Amendment only applies to State National Guard Units or Muskets.
@Franklin:
Or women. It’ll be self-driving cars all the way. Maybe Mbunge works for a company making them?
@Paul L.:
As much as I agree that the 2nd amendment causes way more problems than it solves (Canada for instance has plenty of long rifles, few handguns and a way lower murder rate without the 2nd), that’s a pretty sure way to lose elections. Even a lot of rural Democrats are going to vote against that.
@Paul:
For someone who claims they don’t want gun control, you’re willing to let a political class of people be banned from owning them? Hmmm now where have I heard that before?
You think you’re being cute but really all it shows it’s you are *totally* OK with gun control so long as it’s on people you don’t like. A true hardcore 2A supporter would never even suggest a thing even in jest as it’s contrary to everything it stands for. You on the other hand, just want something to make yourself feel like a big man….
@MBunge: I disagree with you most of the time, but requiring a mental health assessment before putting someone in charge of any kind potentially lethal machinery is probably a good idea.
@Paul L.:
You forgot to add the Framers of the Constitution to that list, which is what draws RBG’s interest.
@KM:
Let us try a thought experiment
A true hardcore [Pro Life] supporter would never even suggest a [Exception for Rape and Incest in a Abortion Law] even in jest as it’s contrary to everything it stands for.
@MBunge: Actually, there are a lot of states that are now accepting complaints/warnings from doctors as a way to deny people license renewals. Most of the people who have their licenses yanked happen to be older people on the verge of dementia/without the reaction times/sight/hearing to drive safely.
So yeah, we’re already doing a version of this already.
@Paul:
Correct. If you are truly pro-life and consider abortion murder, you don’t make exceptions for rape and incest because then you are saying it’s ok to kill those kids, but not these. This gets pointed often but it’s whitewashed as “compassion”. They make the exception because they don’t want to be /be seen as unfeeling towards those women who’ve been traumatized. Still, making any exception means it’s OK to kill under those circumstances. If you really believe abortion kills an innocent baby, WTF is wrong with you that you’re just fine killing some that would be indistinguishable from another if you were unaware of their conception method?
It’s not logically, biologically or theologically consistent. What it is, however, is tacit acknowledgement that their position is emotional rather then factual. They insist they are all babies from conception but then do a 180 and suddenly it’s not a baby anymore, it’s the product of a horrible crime. A pro-lifer who accepts exceptions wants to save *certain* babies and has flexible morals or squishy sensibilities. I actually have more respect for someone who’s hardcore and consistent in their principles – no abortion ever – then someone who whines about the left being “murderers” but is cool with the “murder” those that are politically dicey.
@grumpy realist:
I love the progressives Guns should be regulated like cars argument.
They can still drive their car on their own property.
Driver’s License, Car Registration and Insurance are required for use on Public Roads.
Because No one would ever take Brain activity or a Heartbeat into consideration
Or ability to survive outside the womb after 25 weeks.
Looking at the bigger picture, her complaints against youtube are shared by many. I know several youtube content creators who have used a platform to generate income. Youtube’s monetization policies are, at best, hit-or-miss, and many creators have seen their content demonetized for no apparent reason and with no recourse. Additionally, their algorithm is a black box and there have been many, many accusations that Youtube hides specific kinds of videos and content (well beyond the usual suspects), from feeds and searches. This is especially true of smaller content creators who ware still building a presence on the platform. It’s one reason every Youtuber ask you to “like” their video and subscribe to their channel. It’s also why so many Youtubers who create videos as their job have moved over to platforms like Patreon.
All of which is to say that her grievance against Youtube might be genuine from her point of view and based on Youtube’s business practices in the last couple of years. Killing because a faceless corporate entity changes the rules upon which you depend to make a living is not crazy.
@Paul L.:
Here’s something I can’t quite tell about the right these days… do they shift to ad hominem attacks when they have no arguments, or when they just don’t want to bother arguing? I’ve seen it happening more and more, with a whole lot of the right.
I mean, what you’re posting is objectively stupid. And you know that. And it doesn’t rise to the level of cleverness to be snark…
@KM: Why not just take them at their word on their beliefs — that they believe abortion is murder — and assume everything else is just a tactic?
I think that if you really poke at the proliferation, you will find that those exceptions fall away before their belief that abortion is murder.
The goal is a complete ban on abortion. But that won’t happen overnight, and reducing the number of abortions is (to them) reducing the number of murders. Choosing the lesser evil is choosing less evil.
@Andy:
Well…maybe. OTB has been hurt quite frequently by seemingly arbitrary decisions made by Google and Facebook. Google changes its algorithms constantly. We used to get tons of traffic from Google News. Now we get hardly any. Google has banned us from their advertising network—which is far and away the dominant network out there and becomes more so as they gobble up competitors—for seemingly arbitrary reasons, citing posts that demonstrably don’t violate the policies they claim we violate. I haven’t shot anybody.
Beyond that, I call her rants “crazy” because she didn’t have anything like enough of a following that she could have monetized the videos in question. I suppose it’s weird that they marked her exercise video as “adult” but it’s not like she was going to make more than a buck or two on it (and, ironically, to the extent she did it was because she was an attractive woman in tights, not because she had any expertise to peddle). Animal torture videos were of course banned. I don’t know how to call viewpoint sane.
@James Joyner:
I guess it’s semantics. When I think of “crazy” people I think of people like Charles Manson – people who believe the sky is some color other than blue or have some major mental deficit.
This woman appears to be unbalanced, yes, but not delusional. But maybe we’ll learn more as more information about her comes out.
@Paul L.: I don’t think anyone ever denied that the GOP baseball shooter was on the left. He was a known Bernie Sanders supporter. The YouTube shooter was a vegan and animal rights activist, so she was on the left, too.
FYI, left doesn’t necessarily equal Democrat, but those two people were most certainly on the left.
What I’m talking about are the Internet memes that go around anytime there is a mass shooting accusing the person of being a Democrat. That’s been debunked again and again, since most of the mass shooters/killers were unaligned with any political party, but often had conservative views.
@Paul L.: Let us try another thought experiment: Why are so many “pro-lifers” in favor of the death penalty?
@Andy:
It is however profoundly stupid.
@Gustopher:
Because they don’t. What comes out of their mouths and what they actually believe are two very different things.
Their belief is abortion is the destruction of an potentially perfect child of innocence and worth… and as soon as something compromises any part of that sentence, it’s not “murder” anymore but a possible admissible situation. How come no one is protesting that UH murdered thousands of children when their freezer failed? Where the vigil, the protesters screaming on the sidewalks? Where are the pastors condemning this negligent mass homicide?
How many pro-lifers are ok with abortions for rape and incest – meaning that child isn’t worth saving from murder and will pay for the sins of its sire? How many pro-lifers are ok with exceptions for the health of the mother or severe defects in the fetus – meaning that child isn’t worth saving from murder? Their core belief is that the child is precious for it’s pure innocence and thus must be protected but that protection is NOT universal. Thus it’s frankly hypocritical to run around screaming “murder” when they clearly accept permissible “murder” under their own morals. Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil – they’re just picking the flavor of sin they can palate rather then sticking with a theological theme.
Animal Farm had it right with the absurdity of the logic: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. All abortions are murder to fundies but some are more murderous then others.
@Gustopher:
So why then are so many against birth control?
In other words, they are full of sh!t.
@Monala:
In the recent spat of school shootings, they weren’t even old enough to *have* an official political party but that doesn’t stop people from claiming under-aged teens are registered Dems.
@OzarkHillbilly:
What crime did the baby commit?
@Joe:
You know there were repeating rifles at the time of the Bill of Rights. But you can be a Michael A. Bellesiles who was “the target of an infamous ‘swiftboating’ campaign by the National Rifle Association”.
@Paul L.:
Show me repeating rifle made in 1790, please. Bonus points if it was available to anyone other than the wealthy.
@Paul L.: And you’re right, they generally don’t in my experience.
@Paul L.: It’s not a baby; it’s a fetus. If it were an actual baby, it would be able to breathe and ingest food on its own.
If someone were to forcibly hook you up to someone else to act as life support for the other individual, would you go along with that?
@James Joyner:
Also, her videos had 9 million total views. More information on that and the issues is here:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/04/how-youtubes-adpocalypse-may-have-figured-in-its-tuesday-campus-shooting/