
Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online - mbgaxyz
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Suspect-in-You-Tube-Shooting-Posted-Rants-About-the-Company-Online--478711713.html
======
adventured
This looks like it's going to be an increasingly big problem for the platform
giants, as it pertains to their increasingly aggressive speech restrictions.
As they ramp those restrictions up, I'd expect the need for security to
increase accordingly.

A mentally unwell person is likely to feel targeted, oppressed, threatened,
harmed, etc. by being silenced. They'll feel isolated and it'll very likely
feel like a personal attack by the tech company. The platforms today are so
large, it surely can seem like being cut off from society in general, like a
human right is being revoked.

The people the platforms are looking to restrict based on expressed views or
behavior, I suspect, are going to tend to have higher than normal rates of
mental illness (emphasis that I think it's likely to be a higher rate, not
universal).

~~~
cporios
As far as I know, her videos were demonetized, not rejected. There's a huge
difference between being silenced and being refused ad placement on your
videos.

Getting paid to express your opinion is not a human right.

~~~
holstvoogd
Tru, but if it is your primary income, I can see how people get mad. Mind you,
not, lets go shoot some people mad, but still. Being fired by a demonetization
algorithm is kinda shitty.

Loads of people rely on YT for there income and recent changes to the content
algoritms are demonetizing all kinds of video's without any warning or clear
indication that it happened (or why ftm) and no real recourse to fix things.
It already was a bit of a crap shoot, but now it is quite easy to loose months
of income without being acknowledged as a person. I mean, even if you reach
the 'you-get-human-support' level of views, you still only get to mail with
bots...

Anecdotal evidence:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzb8U0Bje5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzb8U0Bje5A)
;)

~~~
lallysingh
Aren't there any competitors that can come into this space?

~~~
cookiecaper
Vid.me tried and failed: [https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-
now-120b40becafa](https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa)

------
grizzles
She's a disgruntled Youtuber. This is her website:
[http://nasimabc.com/](http://nasimabc.com/)

From her page showing a screenshot of her Youtube ad revenue dashboard:

> Analytics Last 28 days

> Views 366,591

> Revenue $0.10

Highlighted in Red: Revenue $0.10?

There's also another bit where she shows her historical vs. current traffic
and makes a reasonable case that she's getting down ranked.

Interesting times.

~~~
MertsA
There's some rather telling content on that site about her mental state.

[http://nasimabc.com/sitebuilder/images/car_attack_nasim2-426...](http://nasimabc.com/sitebuilder/images/car_attack_nasim2-426x296.jpg)

She feels paranoid like everyone is out to get her and it probably didn't help
that when YouTube "attacked" her online, it was direct, unambiguous,
attributable to a distinct entity (to her at least), etc.

When she ran over some debris in the road she came to the conclusion that
anti-vegan (she identifies strongly as a vegan) businesses hired unspecified
criminals to harm or kill her, and that they did it because of the stickers on
her car.

She might have honestly been deluded into thinking that YouTube wanted her
dead.

~~~
AlexCoventry
On the one hand it surprises me that a screw could accidentally get pushed
into a wheel at that angle. On the other, it would be a really ineffective
attack.

~~~
arbitrage
At high velocities, road debris can do interesting things.

------
aaaaaaaaaaa12
One of her complaints was that YouTube age-restricted her yoga videos (which
were modest by Western standard, she was just wearing shorts, a shirt and no
socks), while not age-restricting much more explicit Nicki Minaj and Miley
Cyrus videos. Is there any explanation to why YouTube does this?

~~~
Nuzzerino
That depends on your definition of explanation. There are loads of complaints
and theories. Here's the official policy:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en)

I'm really not a fan of the policy, and it would be a real shame if it wasn't
changed. But it would also be a shame if it was changed because of a shooting.
It shouldn't have come to this in the first place.

~~~
verylittlemeat
She had a pretty good point. Any given popular music video is loaded with
borderline porn. Why were her fully clothed yoga videos (that weren't even
questionably sexual) not allowed but the former were?

~~~
silveroriole
Part of this is obvious: youtube restriction policies are largely based on
what is advertiser-friendly, and popular music videos are advertiser-friendly
by definition.

I don’t know what caused her videos to be demonetised, but she’s not wrong -
it does seem pretty much arbitrary with no proper channel for disputing it.

~~~
prawn
Is it possible that the decision to demonetise or age-restrict was
algorithmic, then she was too small-fry to get any interest/reconsideration
from support?

We've heard loads of stories of people getting AdSense accounts shut unfairly
and without recourse, for example. If that was your entire income, you already
felt hard done by, and were so inclined, I could see how you might go off the
rails.

~~~
silveroriole
For sure. Its like if your boss used an algorithm to decide your pay, and he
wouldn’t disclose this algorithm to you. Some months “the algorithm” declares
all your work bad and the boss pays you nothing. Meanwhile, you can see other
employees’ much worse work getting paid regularly, essentially because they’re
more popular and the boss likes them more. Anyone would feel unfairly treated
under those circumstances, and would harbour a great deal of resentment.

Most people would leave such a “job” or try to game the algorithm, but killing
the boss does also look like an obvious (if wrong and probably unproductive)
option!

~~~
Consultant32452
This just made me realize how much of a pass Youtube gets compared to Uber.
Youtube expects you to provide it with content and it may arbitrarily choose
to never pay you for your work. With Uber you will at least get something.

~~~
sutterbomb
With uber you are paid when you serve a customer. Creating content, on its
own, is not serving either a customer or an end user, so there can be no
expectation of payment.

~~~
Consultant32452
Well, there are at least some cases in which Youtube pays people who upload
videos. When a Youtuber _does_ get paid, who is the customer?

------
ironjunkie
What a terrible disaster this afternoon. It should never finish like this.

The only thing I hope out of this is that it will maybe relaunch the debates
about the megaplatforms and censorship. (Facebook, youtube, Google,...). The
bigger they become, the more they will start censoring everything.

More people need to launch the movement to host their videos independentlty.
Peertube is a good start for example
[https://joinpeertube.org/en/home/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/home/)

~~~
skookumchuck
People think that suppressing "hate" and "offensive" speech will only suppress
speech other than theirs.

~~~
spacehome
The people who say that don't have much in the way of independent thought in
the first place, so they're probably right in thinking it will never affect
them.

------
tristanj
Looks like this is the culprit's website

[http://www.nasimesabz.com/index.html](http://www.nasimesabz.com/index.html)

There are links to her (4?) youtube accounts, which have all been terminated.
There's a link to her instagram, which has also been terminated, however there
is a cached-copy here
[http://www.pictame.com/tag/yesilnasim](http://www.pictame.com/tag/yesilnasim)

~~~
jl6
That’s a style of web design I’ve seen before - lots of colors, different font
sizes, wall of text rants... something about it screams mental instability.
See Time Cube for an extreme example.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
back in the 90's it was extremely common to see lots of colors, especially on
a black background.

~~~
droidist2
To be fair we were pretty crazy back then, this was before the medication
boom. Thankfully we got treatment, now our moods are even and flat like our UI
design.

------
onetimemanytime
As I see it: She posted on her site that she made 10 cents for 366,000 views
these days. She must have been making quite a bit and then probably the algo
determined that she is not making advertiser friendly videos so the spigot got
closed. Must have appealed, we all know how those work.

------
danaliv
So, nothing to do with a “boyfriend.” She didn’t even know the people she
shot.

Where on earth did that bad information come from yesterday?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Sexist assumptions, I'm sure. Male shooter? Bullied 4chan gamer nerd. Female
shooter? Relationship problems. Middle-eastern looking male shooter?
Terrorist.

~~~
RosanaAnaDana
And the fact that there are so few examples of women who commit multiple
homicide where they __don 't __target domestic partners, friends, families,
coworkers, etc. Genuinely, the only known instance I 've read of in the US was
the San Bernadino shooter, and she was pretty clearly religiously motivated.

~~~
stevenwoo
There was the "I don't like Mondays" shooter.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_\(San_Diego\))

------
ravenstine
It turns out that when an organization applies rules arbitrarily, they
eventually piss off the wrong person.

~~~
matthewbauer
Sounds like you are blaming the victim.

~~~
ben509
As a general principal, there is no logical or moral reason why a victim
should be beyond blame. The goal should be to judge the situation fairly; just
as much as you don't want to automatically blame the victim, neither should
you automatically find the victim blameless.

~~~
anxrn
Give me one good reason why blaming a random Google employee lunching in the
cafeteria is "fair".

(Disclaimer: I witnessed the shooting today, so not quite unbiased)

~~~
ben509
We consider crimes against young children to be particularly bad precisely
because they're genuinely blameless.

Once you get past childhood, though, you're a moral agent making choices. If
you work at a company, yeah, you are in a small part contributing to their
actions and by continuing to work there, assenting to those actions.

After all, a random Googler lunching in the cafeteria wants the prestige
associated with all the good things Google does, that's got to come with some
measure of blame for the bad things Google does. You can't have it both ways.

~~~
anxrn
So, wanting to work at a reputed place for software engineering == endorsing
every single policy the company (a collection of over 70K individuals) might
adopt? To the point that you should be expected to take a bullet for it?

------
aaomidi
So looking at her videos on Telegram
([https://t.me/nasimesabz1](https://t.me/nasimesabz1)), she was anti gun. She
was a very weird individual with clear mental health issues.

I don't even know what to make of most of her content on that channel.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
Can you expand on that? Did she make irrational comments, accuse people of
impossible acts, was she threatening? I looked at the 1.5 minute video someone
copied out and she was upset but not frothing at the mouth.

~~~
pavs
You don't have to be "frothing at the mouth" to be mentally unstable. I saw
her videos on Dailymotion and I had the impression that something is not right
with her, can't really pinpoint or explain what it is. but definitely very
awkward in front of the camera. Just my personal take on it.

~~~
prawn
I watched one video. It's possible that something was "not right with her" but
then I think that's true in some small way with almost all of us (personality
foibles, etc).

But it's also possible she was on-edge because she was angry and frustrated by
a situation that was important to her (earnings, passions, etc). Lots of
people act like that when they feel upset, then you add in the pressure of a
camera...

~~~
creaghpatr
Also, hindsight is 20/20, it’s easy to ascribe abnormal characteristics to a
person after an event like this rather than before

~~~
pavs
very true.

------
jd20
So if this person was not an employee, it's amazing to me how she got into the
building? Usually these large tech campuses are pretty locked down, with at
least one badged entrance, and security or front desk staff watching who comes
and goes.

That said, I've never visited the YouTube campus, so maybe it bucks the norm.

~~~
rdl
It was outdoors. Also, I have only been to a couple SV tech companies where
they had solid enough doors/etc. at entrance to actually stop someone going in
shooting from getting inside; the security is really just there for keeping
homeless out, as well as to enforce corp secrecy/etc.

~~~
jd20
I see, early reports seemed to indicate the shooter was at a party, possibly
inside. Really sad when employees in the bay area, which is generally very
safe, have to fear for their lives because of something their employer may
have done to piss someone off.

~~~
rdl
This incident was enough of an outlier that probably the correct thing to do
is nothing, although that's really hard for people to accept. I'd just
recommend improved first aid/trauma response (put AEDs around, train people to
CLS standard).

~~~
sitkack
As sad as this is, dying in a car crash is more likely.

------
avree
Why was her YouTube channel nuked after this happening? Seems weird and
dystopian, even if what she did was obviously very wrong.

~~~
rmrm
Probably because you dont know what she put up there, and you dont want to
give an attempted murderer a giant platform, as a win.

~~~
avree
I do know what she put there, though, since on the internet is is fairly
trivial to see what was on a publicly available and commonly crawled website
before it was removed.

And there was nothing that related to the killing, and nothing even
tangentially related to the ban message. No 'final manifesto' or anything like
that.

If you are curious, here is a mirror of her videos:
[http://www.dailymotion.com/yesilnasim/videos](http://www.dailymotion.com/yesilnasim/videos)

~~~
whamlastxmas
Those have also all been removed

------
vowelless
Firstly, my sympathies with the people at Youtube HQ. I have many, many
friends in the bay area and so this kind of thing hits close to home.

Secondly, I struggle when thinking about if we should give airtime to a
shooter's grievances, or reasons. Or even mention who they are. I tend to be
on the side of: don't give them any air time. And certainly, don't acquiesce
to this type of behavior because it is almost by definition "terrorism" (using
violence to cause change in policies).

On the other hand, I have been hearing a lot about YouTube demonitization,
censorship, etc. Should this shooting be a part of the discussion about
censorship? Should YouTube and the tech community let it affect the discourse
around censorship?

I don't know.

~~~
toomanybeersies
There are correct ways to start a discourse around censorship.

Shooting people is not one of them.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Blowing people up got Ted Kaczynski's anti-technology manifesto printed in the
NYTimes. Even if got through to one person I bet he feels like it was worth
it.

It's not something to admit in polite company but violence is a great way to
start a conversation.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Just because it's effective doesn't mean it's correct though.

~~~
boomlinde
What is the definition of "correct" in this context that we can all agree to?

~~~
themacguffinman
Morally correct?

~~~
boomlinde
"Morally correct" as in according to one's moral principles? Is that, in its
turn, something that we all agree on and share?

Terrorists definitely hold moral principles that are different from mine. To a
terrorist, blowing people up to bring attention to their point may be the
morally correct thing to do.

Hence we have terrifying people like Kaczynski with extremely strong moral
convictions that deviate far from what is generally considered normal and
socially acceptable, whose ill deeds are consistent and true to their moral
principles.

~~~
themacguffinman
Sure, terrorists disagree, but you're avoiding the fact that most people here
- on this site, in this industry, in this country - agree that blowing people
up for attention is morally incorrect.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing. That it's possible for someone to
believe terrorism is good? I suspect most people already know that, but
thankfully most of us disagree.

~~~
boomlinde
It's mostly a semantic argument. I'm arguing against using "correct" in a
context where correctness evidently depends on morality, which is individual
enough that this kind of person exists and thrives. That nullifies the whole
basis of the argument that "There are correct ways to start a discourse around
censorship." I'm not sure that it was meant as an argument. Maybe it's just a
cheap way to score points among "most people here", because it's rather
pointless as an argument regardless of its validity.

Also, I assume that by this country you mean the U.S., where killing people at
least partly to draw attention (for the purpose of general deterrence) is
practiced by the justice system. I bet you'll find a lot more people in this
crowd that agree with this on the basis of their morals. I know people who
believe one thing but will at least briefly change their mind learning of some
particularly heinous crime or some particularly tragic wrongful conviction.
Correct/incorrect isn't really a scale, so which would pick for something a
little more polarized like this?

------
noemit
She had a lot of YouTube subscribers - It’s possible it was her main source of
income.

------
Geee
Her videos are still up on Dailymotion
[http://www.dailymotion.com/yesilnasim/videos](http://www.dailymotion.com/yesilnasim/videos)

------
mudil
No justification for her actions, but Google does act as a serf master over
the entire internet. It can single handedly decide who succeeds, who fails,
and there is no recourse. There is no recourse, no appeal. Some 20 year old
dude in Menlo Park decides, and your website, your life, your work, your
future, is changed forever. Here's our account:
[https://www.medgadget.com/google](https://www.medgadget.com/google)

~~~
mc32
People need to realize that using "free" platforms, means they are beyond your
control and your fate is up to their vagaries.

I'm against censorship (private censorship which takes political sides
especially) but ultimately, unless you're hosting your own content, just enjoy
what you get for free while you can and don't bank on it.

YT is not there to make _you_ money. They are there to make money for
themselves. If you get in the way of that (via potential boycotts, online
bandwagoning, etc.) they will likely cut you loose.

PS most of the censorship is done overseas, mostly SEAsia, not San Bruno, etc.

~~~
Nuzzerino
> People need to realize that using "free" platforms, means they are beyond
> your control and your fate is up to their vagaries.

People need to realize that there is no such thing as free. Nobody is getting
anything for free here, because usage of the service generates analytics data,
and it goes into a thick file connected to your account. Those so-called
"free" platforms also monopolize the market space, creating less incentives
for alternative implementations and competing platforms. Few alternatives are
therefore developed, further monopolizing the space, and further cementing the
fact that having a choice in the matter isn't in the cards.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
you can use them without being tracked by watching in anon mode, or deleting
your cookies first. google doesn't block you. i watch it that way all the
time. and its free.

~~~
Nuzzerino
Browser fingerprinting doesn't require cookies, and you better believe they
use it.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
I heard on the radio just earlier that it was declared a "domestic dispute" by
local police.

~~~
jmharvey
I also saw those reports. I found that WNYC's "Breaking News Consumer
Handbook"[1] was a useful tool for sorting through the various reports. Many
of the reports citing a "domestic dispute" either cited other news outlets (in
some cases, without even citing any particular outlet) or attributed its facts
to vague "reports."

Of the sources I was following, KRON seemed to have the lowest standards (at
times even publishing contradictory statements as fact in consecutive
paragraphs of their story), while NYT had the highest (but, correspondingly,
stuck with the "the shooter has not been identified" line for hours longer
than most other outlets).

I find looking at the Wikipedia history page [2] for incidents like this
educational for understanding how our knowledge of events changed over time.
In this case, the Wikipedia article attributed the domestic dispute claim to
two law enforcement officials who spoke to CBS News. The cited CBS News
article no longer supports the facts in the Wikipedia article, but presumably
did at one time.

[1] [https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-
handbook-...](https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-
pdf/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=YouTube_headquart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=YouTube_headquarters_shooting&action=history)

------
spacehome
She's complaining about being censored. She would have been helped immensely
by somebody showing her how to host her own videos on her own website.

~~~
shi
No one visits personal websites to watch self-hosted videos nowadays. YouTube
is not only about video hosting, but also about the large user base.

~~~
devmunchies
YouTube is so popular that it’s indirectly censoring private content by
getting all the traffic.

------
naasking
So much for pervasive surveillance revealing domestic terrorists and other
such threats.

~~~
nerdponx
It also seems to be standard corporate training procedure to tell employees
that they should report any behavior like this that might suggest that a
coworker is "at risk" for doing something like this.

~~~
naasking
Right, because everyone is automatically a knowledgeable psychologist. It's
getting uncomfortably close to "report your neighbour" type tactics.

~~~
CaptSpify
If you ask amateurs to do police work, you are going to get amateur-quality
results.

------
fouc
A lot of people in this thread are attempting to describe Nasim as a 'weird'
or 'unstable' individual. I wonder if there's some narrative building here
going on here? Many want to explain it away with a cliche.

It's a shame what happened. Too bad our world isn't more like K-Pax.

~~~
danso
I think she's being labeled as "unstable" mianily because of her attempt at
mass murder.

------
bitL
This is like straight out of Mr. Robot. We are living it now.

------
spitfire
Serious question here. What are the liability laws like in the US for
producers of propaganda? Can you hold say inforwars or brietbart (used as
proxies here) liable if they insight or inflame this sort of person to go on a
rampage?

You could easily prove in a court of law that what they peddle is not factual
so I don't see how they can't have some liability. Freedom of speech is
freedom to speak, not freedom from consequences.

Possible precedent here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/suicide-
texting-trial-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/suicide-texting-
trial-michelle-carter-conrad-roy.html)

------
alex_young
It seems like the revenue share may have pushed her over the edge.

Honest question: does the revenue share program do anything positive? It seems
like it increases noise quite a bit to me.

~~~
josephpmay
Revenue sharing keeps creators from switching to another platform.

A significant number of people make their living off of Youtube

~~~
alex_young
I understand that people can make a significant amount of money that way, but
is there really another platform to switch to that could offer the same?

------
Natsu
I have to really wonder if YouTube is actually anti-vegan or if she was
filtered for something else.

~~~
rmrm
I watch a vegan channel that Youtube recommended to me quite often, and Im not
even vegan.

Based on her page, showing dogs being boiled alive, I think vegan isnt perhaps
the best description for that content. A vegan channel is someone showing how
to make salads.

~~~
seattle_spring
Seems to me that modern day veganism is more related to showing provocative
videos of animal abuse than it is making salads.

~~~
dc_gregory
It isn't. Its just the noisy people tend to be the most visible. The vast
majority of vegans (including myself) just want to find good food.

------
EleneShubladze
How does the discrimination and filtering on youtube justify the murder? I
just don't get it.

~~~
celticninja
Same way school shooters justify it to themselves.

~~~
EleneShubladze
You can't justify murder.

Edit: I didn't mean you personally.

------
mikeash
The amount of victim blaming in these comments is astounding. Three people are
in the hospital because of an armed maniac, and a bunch of the comments are
about how YouTube brought this on themselves with their policies about videos.

I’m not religious, but y’all need Jesus.

~~~
vinculuss
The people who were shot are the victims, no one blames them or suggests they
did wrong.

YouTube is not a victim. Discussing questionable corporate policies of a
company is not victim blaming.

~~~
mikeash
I completely disagree. YouTube is a victim too. Using an incident like this to
criticize a policy you don’t like is completely beyond the pale. The fact that
they apparently drove a crazy person to attempted homicide has no bearing
whatsoever on whether those policies are good or bad.

~~~
vinculuss
I don't agree that corporations are people. If you believe that a corporation
is a person, then I see your argument, despite not agreeing with it.

~~~
mikeash
Why do they need to be “people” to be a victim?

Even if you want to insist that YouTube can not possibly be a victim, it’s
_still_ horrible to jump on a multiple attempted homicide to criticize
policies about videos posted on a web site.

~~~
orbenn
If you get in a car accident, no one counts your car as a victim. This is the
same thing.

~~~
mikeash
Unlike cars, corporations are at least _made of_ people.

If you steal from a corporate-owned store, is that a victimless crime?

~~~
orbenn
In that case you're robbing the people who own the corporation (shareholders).
They're the victims, not the corporation itself.

A corporation is owned by people. It is not "made of" people like some
grotesque colossus.

~~~
mikeash
If we can assign victimhood to the shareholders then surely we can assign
blame as well? Seems like you’re just slightly moving the pointers with no
actual consequence here.

People got shot and HN commenters are using it as a platform to criticize
content policies of the company they work for. That is the pertinent thing
here. Semantic quibbles about which specific entities count as the “victims”
are not terribly relevant.

------
pmarreck
At what point did she wrongfully decide YouTube owed her _anything_?

~~~
written
Tech companies realize they owe a lot to their users. They owe them their
entire existence, I'd say. It's quite obvious from their behavior and the fact
they try to attract and hoard user attention. Users are valuable in general.

It's not like it's one way transfer of value from companies to users.

So why your rhetorical question?

~~~
pmarreck
Because if YouTube decided to hoard all ad revenue as of tomorrow (putting
aside for a minute how bad of a long-term business decision that would be),
that would _still_ not be a valid reason to shoot up the HQ.

~~~
written
I'm just saying that YouTube and likes of it would be nothing without
producers of content, big and small. It's a mutual relationship. Both owe each
other their business.

It's orthogonal question to the effectiveness of going somewhere and shooting
some people.

------
komali2
First two comments good for a world-weary chuckle:

1\. Xenophobic, hateful comment about Muslims

2\. Complaint about her suicide being a waste because "she's hot"

Still not sure why news websites bother with comment sections. I guess because
it counts as "engagement?"

~~~
petre
Interferes with their narrative, adds the overhead of moderation because
trolling is usually prevalent. Can still be fun to read sometimes.

------
_pmf_
Domestic dispute, huh?

------
pcunite
Is it just me or does her video facial animations appear to be virtual?

------
ssaew333
If you search her name on twitter, around 40% of what you see is right wing
conspiracy theorists who assert, without evidence, that she was a member of
ISIS. I also noticed a smaller percentage of people asserting, again without
evidence, that she was an NRA member. And neither appear to be true.

How do these get spread on Twitter? Are partisans mindlessly voting them up?
Are bots behind this?

Man, do I feel stupid for thinking the internet would be a force for good.
That it would promote democracy, free speech, and critical thinking.

I look at Facebook and Twitter, and the bad greatly outweighs the good. I
chose a career in web dev, thinking I would be doing something beneficial, but
everything we've done amounts to nothing.

~~~
justicezyx
> 40% of what you see is right wing conspiracy theorists

Right in a post complaining labelling, a labeling slapping to my face.

I am a bit depressed by our species ability to do rational thinking.

~~~
ng-user
A little contradictory, I concur.

Does claiming someone is a member of ISIS automatically make you a right-wing
conspiracy theorist or is it different under these circumstances?

How is the number 40% actually determined, surely it must be an assumption
from scrolling through the feed for a little while? To my knowledge it's
difficult (near impossible without 3rd party tools) to determine in real-time
the number of tweets pertaining to a certain topic.

~~~
ssaew333
I thought it was clear from my post i was guesstimating. I don't typically do
rigorous analysis of what I see in twitter results, so I'll just say, it
seemed like a lot of right wing accounts implying that media was covering up
the shooting, or that the shooter was actually motivated by radical islam.

~~~
justicezyx
Right, this statement, if were used by the original post, to me, is quite
accurate.

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chapill
I'm sure this submission will get flagged off the front page too because
"Iranian woman bears arms against YouTube for censorship" doesn't really fit
the narrative around here, but here's her page before it's wiped out too. Her
YT and Insta have already been nuked.

[http://www.nasimesabz.com/](http://www.nasimesabz.com/)

~~~
dang
> _the narrative around here_

In my experience, people tend to perceive that to be whatever they don't like,
and it varies greatly with the perceiver.

I don't see why this story would get flagged. (Edit: some users are pointing
out the don't-give-airtime argument. That's a fair point.)

~~~
interfixus
Nevertheless, 16 minutes old, it seems flagged and dead to me.

~~~
dang
It's sitting in the top 10 on the front page.

~~~
interfixus
Yes, status was drastically changed when I refreshed. Someone supposedly
vouched.

~~~
interfixus
So, let me hear it from the numerous downvoters: Are you suggesting I'm lying?

Downvoting of simple fact-reporting is slightly too advanced a pattern for my
somewhat simple mind.

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noemit
Google and YouTube content policy is geared to make them money, not be “free”
or “equal”

~~~
bsimpson
Ummm, you just posted about exactly that.

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idlewords
Please consider not giving this person the online attention she sought as a
result of her actions, and join me in flagging stories that dwell on her
motives.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
Would you have said the same thing about Mark Conditt? Or is there a
difference? Should we talk about some murderers and not others? Was he a
terrorist? Was she?

~~~
idlewords
We know that reporting on a killer's identity and motives in detail encourages
ideation in others. I think it's fine to talk about these people, but context
is important.

In this case, it appears to be someone who was frustrated with a lack of
social media attention; we should be careful in not rewarding her heinous act
in a way that encourages a future shooter.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
i think its more likely she was frustrated at losing payment, which could be
completely separate from "social media attention".

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shadowmore
Content platforms have no place policing content. All the algorithms currently
used are utterly flawed, and they will always be flawed, both technically and
morally. Technically, they'll always have false positives, especially at
scale. Morally, they turn the platform owners into political figures
inherently, siding with or against certain thoughts and sentiments.

The only solution is for platforms to be completely content agnostic and allow
absolutely everything except outright graphic violence and adult content.

No removing any kind of speech whatsoever, including so-called "hate speech",
no policing political topics, no identifying "fake news" and so forth -- words
cannot hurt anyone, objectively, and everyone has their own personal agency to
decide what they want to watch and make their own decisions based on what they
see, even if it's state-funded propaganda.

If the police or FBI come to them with a warrant and take down notice, then
sure. Otherwise, allow absolutely everything, and allow the free market of
popularity to reign supreme.

In fact, all sides of all political and social issues should be outraged that
content platforms think they have a place deciding what we can and cannot see.

And advertisers should stop allowing online outrage to dictate where they
advertise by realizing two simple truths: a) if I'm watching a video with your
advertisement on it, it's because I made the conscious choice to watch that
video, and even if the video is about apartheid or waterboarding or guns, it's
content that I want to consume, so they have no place stripping me of my
personal agency, and b) the old model of advertisers being seen as endorsers
for TV shows doesn't apply to on-demand online content.

~~~
pitaa
> advertisers should stop allowing online outrage to dictate where they
> advertise

I agree, but good luck convincing the Tide executives that its okay for their
ad to play before a video of a KKK rally.

Furthermore, how do you even create a content platform that doesn't police
content and not have it immediately attract scores of users that are only
there because they were banned from everywhere else, thus turning your
platform into a cesspool that the more mainstream users avoid? (see voat.co)

~~~
nailer
If it's tagged 'racism (news)' and Tide says they're OK with that (Tide
advertise after news segments like this all the time), sure, if it's tagged
'race relations' then maybe not.

Google can and should do better than a boolean for monetisable.

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KKKKkkkk1
I have a theory about workplace shootings. American companies have a very
pronounced dog-eat-dog culture. So much so that whole books have been written
about the workplace asshole [1]. I'm wondering if some of the shootings can be
explained as the workplace asshole going one step further and bringing his
guns to work.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule)

~~~
ravenstine
How does that have anything to do with the shooting at YouTube? It comes off
like you didn't even read beyond the headline. (yes, it's happened at a
workplace, but this wasn't some disgruntled employee in the sense that you're
making it out to be)

