YouTube HQ shooter identified as animal rights activist Nasim Aghdam, who was unhappy with censorship of her account
The YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, erupted into chaos when a now-identified female shooter entered the campus and opened fire. According to local law enforcement, she critically wounded three employees before killing herself.
The shooter has now been confirmed to be Nasim Aghdam, a user of the video platform. Aghdam has a website that contains an alleged manifesto that slams YouTube for censorship as well as demonetization of the content in her account, which is said to be the motive behind her carrying out the shootout, though not confirmed.
Aghdam is said to have no relationship with any member of the YouTube facility in San Bruno.
According to sources who contacted ABC7 News, Aghdam's identity was not known by anyone in the campus. She allegedly did not have an ID badge but was just carrying a purse when she entered the facility.
It is being said that a possible motivation for the shooting could be related to her multiple YouTube accounts, most of whom she says have seen a significant decline in viewership over the past few months.
Aghdam, who was said to reside in Southern California, apparently had a long history of animal rights activism. Back in 2009, Aghdam was photographed at a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) rally in San Diego paper where she protested along with many others the use of pigs in military training to demonstrate battlefield wounds.
The 39-year-old described herself on her now-defunct YouTube page as "the Persian Azeri female vegan athlete and animal rights activist promoting VEGANISM, the healthy and humane way of living."
"Nasim produced and launched the first vegan Persian TV commercial and first Persian animal rights music video (Do You Dare) in 2010, International Persian satellite television, Andisheh TV."
"Nasim is the well known and most famous animal rights activist in the Persian /Turkish community."
Aghdam seems to have been holding a grudge against YouTube for the longest time, claiming she was not receiving the remuneration she expected for hits on her videos.
She also posted a picture last February of her holding a self-made protest sign which read: "Youtube dictatorship. Hidden policy: promote stupidity, discrimination, suppression of truth
"www..nasimesabz.com
"Share if u hate discrimination"
The shooter embedded videos from some prominent YouTubers on her channel as well as on her website, including ones from creator Casey Neistat. These videos spoke about the deemed YouTube "Ad-Pocalypse" which saw the majority of users experience huge dips in traffic, loss of subscribers and demonetization of their uploads.
Boasting a subscriber base of 9,000,000, Neistat made a viral video about the YouTube revenue scare for content creators.
The mass shooter had an active and prolific presence on social media. You can watch some of her videos below, which she posted on her Facebook and Instagram channels.
Nasim's channel contained flashy and prolific videos that covered everything from cooking to exercise.
Although Aghdam's YouTube channel has now been terminated, it was active for a short duration following the shooting which left three wounded and herself dead of a self-inflicted wound, according to police.
NBC Bay Area reported that in one video, she complained that 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 fewer views. In a Facebook post from February 2017, Aghdam blasted YouTube saying, ‘There is not equal growth opportunity on YouTube.'”
That being said, all-in-all, Aghdam seems to be trying hard to become a YouTube star. Her channel had quite a few goofy parody videos, one of them was a satire on Taylor Swift and another was a comic take titled “Americans vs Iranians.”
In some videos, Nasim showed off her muscular biceps. She used her social media presence to highlight her activism in part. She was quoted in 2009 by The Los Angeles Times as participating in an animal rights protest. “For me, animal rights equals human rights,” the article quoted a 29-year-old Nasim Aghdam as saying, identifying her as “a construction company office manager from San Diego.”
“Just because they can’t talk doesn’t mean we should take advantage of them,” she also said, according to the article. That article’s lead says, “Two dozen animal rights activists — accompanied by four dogs — demonstrated outside Camp Pendleton today to protest the use of pigs in “live tissue” training for Marines and sailors learning how to treat battlefield casualties.”
According to various sources and uploads, it appears that Aghdam was discontented by the changes in the YouTube platform. She wrote on her website, "Be aware! Dictatorship exists in all countries but with different tactics! They only care for personal and short-term profits and do anything to reach their goals even by fooling simple-minded people, hiding the truth, manipulating science and everything, putting public mental and physical health at risk, abusing non-human animals, polluting the environment, destroying family values, promoting materialism and sexual degeneration in the name of freedom and turning people into programmed robots!"
On her website, Aghdam goes on to quote Adolf Hitler saying, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it."
Targeting YouTube and its censorship, she concludes by saying: "There is no free speech in the 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."
Her website also showed screenshots of her "suppressed" videos, one of them being an instructional video for a workout. Aghdam refers to the said video and remarks: "This video got age-restricted after new, close-minded YouTube employees got control of my Farsi YouTube channel last year, 2016, and began filtering my videos to reduce views and suppress and discourage me from making my videos!"
In one video that Aghdam posted on Dailymotion, she claims to be from Iran in an introduction to a mock appearance on America’s Got Talent.
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!” she declared on one of her websites, among one of many statements criticizing the company across her other websites and extensive social media presence, sometimes using the name Nasime Sabz Yeşil Nasim, according to Breitbart News.
From what we know, Nasim had maintained at least two Instagram accounts, in which she frequently captioned her posts in Persian, which was presumably her native language. Many a time, she is seen making references to Iran and the Azeri ethnic group that resides primarily in Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan.
Although law enforcement has not specified a motive for the shooting as yet, early media reports out of California reported that the shooting may have stemmed from a domestic dispute, but it is unlikely as no one in the campus was reported to have known her identity. The police are yet to confirm the actual motive.
On February 20, YouTube demonetized channels with less than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in a new advertising policy devised by the company. Although Aghdam's main channel in English had over 5,000 subscribers and her videos had been viewed more than one million times, quite a few of her videos were demonetized as per her claims. She also has a page on DailyMotion, where she posted 44 videos but only got 12 followers.
Breitbart News reported that a post on the website of the “Interfaith Vegan Alliance” refers to her by the name Nasime Sabz, and claims she is an adherent of the Baha’i faith, which is persecuted in Iran. They also claim she once ran a “TV show on Persian Satellite.”