Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online - Filtering and age restricting her content
Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the
Company Online
By Michael Bott, Kevin Nious, Bethney Bonilla and Liz
Wagner
Published 4 hours ago | Updated 33 minutes ago
The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has confirmed the
identity of the shooter who opened fire on YouTube’s campus in San Bruno
Tuesday. Nasim Aghdam, 39, lived in Southern California and appears to have had
a robust presence on YouTube.
In a video posted in January 2017, she says YouTube
“discriminated and filtered” her content. In the video, Aghdam says her channel
used to get lots of views but that after being “filtered” by the company, it
received far fewer views.
In one online rant, she complained that YouTube censored
her content by imposing an age restriction on one of her workout videos because
they were too racy. She says the company failed to do the same thing for stars
like Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj, whose videos, she says, are inappropriate for
children.
In a Facebook post from February 2017, Aghdam blasted
YouTube saying, “There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube.”
On her personal webpage, she posted another rant about
YouTube saying, “Be aware…there is no free speech in real world and you will be
suppressed for telling the truth that is not supported by the system. Videos of
targeted users are filtered and merely relegated, so that people can hardly see
their videos.” Aghdam also quotes Adolf Hitler, saying, “Make the lie big, make
it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
On her Instagram account she posted a video along with a
caption reading, “What do you think of freedom of speech and does it really
exist in western countries?”
It appears Aghdam controlled multiple YouTube channels,
including one with videos of her speaking Farsi. Aghdam posted videos about an
array of topics including hand art and animal rights.
In 2009, she protested the military’s use of pigs in
training exercises. A news report by The San Diego Union Tribune shows a photo
of Aghdam holding a plastic sword and spattered in blood as part of the
demonstration by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has also learned the
license plate on a car towed from YouTube’s campus Tuesday is registered to
Aghdam. In 2014, she posted a video on YouTube of what appears to be the same
car, stating that it was vandalized by “anti-vegans” because a bumper sticker
said, “meat is murder.”
Aghdam shot three victims in the courtyard of the YouTube
campus in San Bruno on Tuesday. Police say she then killed herself. Law
enforcement officials say they believe that the motive behind the shooting is a
domestic-related dispute.
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