
Police say shooter’s anger over YouTube policies ‘appears to be the motive’ - ExcelSaga
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/police-say-shooters-anger-over-youtube-policies-appears-to-be-the-motive/
======
nopriorarrests
As someone who follows digital advertising industry, I want to add some
context to this discussion.

People tend to view youtube "de-monetization" act as something out of the
blue. Story goes as "evil youtube cornered the market of online videos and now
acting like a spoiled child, f--king with people who were making some small
buck from their videos".

This is not the case. In fact, for last 2 years large advertisers were getting
more and more unhappy and angry about digital advertising, citing the lack of
transparency, fraud and lack of brand safety as their main concerns. It was
brewing for a long time now.

P&G, the largest advertiser in the world, and trend-setter in general
advertising, cut hundreds of millions from their digital budgets in 2017. [0]

Youtube, unlike google search engine, depends on large brands doing "brand
advertising", as opposed to "performance advertising". You can't force 10000's
of small businesses advertise on youtube, ROI is just not here. It's P&G,
Ford, Unilever and others giants who keep the lights on in youtube offices,
and giants were clearly revolting. And when they cut spend, they cut it not
from youtube only, but from all digital, meaning that google mothership also
hurt from their move.

So, youtube tried to save the situation, clumsily. Ads are now appearing in
much smaller subset of videos, which are vettoed, and youtube jacked up the
prices [1] of such inventory, to make up the lost revenue from long tail of
videos.

Take into account the fact that youtube is rumored to be unprofitable or
making very modest profit (due to enormous technical costs they have) and you
see it more like move out of desperation than anything else.

[0] [http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble-
cut-140-million...](http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble-
cut-140-million-in-digital-ad-spending-because-of-brand-safety-concerns/)

[1] [https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad-
prices...](https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices-
premium-ad-inventory-229814)

~~~
bluetwo
Yes. Fascinating to watch markets form and price discovery happen. For awhile
they only cared about people providing free content that would bring in the
eyeballs so they could sell those ads. When advertisers got demanding they had
to do something.

But I only see a loose connection between that and what happened. This was a
woman driven by likes or money (hard to tell which was more important), and
attempted to kill because of this.

This is more like a machine shop owner laying off people because some jobs
were moving to Asia and an ex-employee shooting up the offices the next day.

Macro- and micro- economics surely played a part, but the root of the problem
was in her head.

------
bufferoverflow
I don't get Youtube policies. Why not let the advertisers decide which
channels to advertise on? Why demonetize anything? This babysitting attitude
makes so many creators unhappy.

If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?

~~~
skybrian
Advertisers don't actually want to spend time picking YouTube channels
individually. But they will complain if YouTube runs their ads against the
wrong content. They have threatened to leave before. [1]

Picking channels that are good for advertising is a service that YouTube does
for advertisers.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are-
pulling-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are-pulling-
spend-from-youtube-2017-3)

~~~
thevardanian
Just out of curiosity how much leverage do advertising companies actually
have?

~~~
mediaman
All of it. It's where nearly all their revenue comes from. There's no
remaining business without the ad sales.

~~~
supreme_sublime
First of all, YouTube doesn't make money.

Secondly, there are two sides to this equation. The advertisers aren't paying
for ads as charity to Google. They want the billions of views that YouTube
gets every day. While I don't know the exact statistics, YouTube definitely
seems to be growing in influence where people who are popular on the platform
are legitimate celebrities. Advertisers would be foolish to not try to get in
on some of the publicity. Now I'm a bit conspiracy theory-ish on this whole
thing. I really think that between the advertisers and traditional media there
wasn't necessarily a concerted effort where both of them planned to do
something together, they were just both acting in their self interest. So when
traditional media outlets started publishing the nature of the videos that
some ads would play next to, the advertisers thought "Well, this is a great
opportunity to strong arm them for some cheaper ads." Meanwhile the
traditional media was simply attacking a competitor. It seems to me like there
were also some useful idiots at YouTube who saw the so-called terrible things
that ads were next to and over corrected. Instead of saying "Okay, well, good
luck reaching how many people we do." to advertisers, they rolled over and
capitulated. When in my opinion, they really didn't need to. Then again, they
know more about the business than I do.

But really pulling ads from too many videos hurts the business too, if ads
aren't playing on a video, they are hosting that video for free. It makes
absolutely no sense. There is also no evidence of any kind of long term
association between advertisements and content. You don't see a coke ad before
an ISIS beheading video and think "Huh, Coke endorses ISIS".

~~~
mhudson125
I'd love to see where you got the idea that YouTube doesn't make any money. As
far as I know they don't break out YouTube revenue in any of their filings.

In fact, in each of the filings for 2016 & 2017 the revenue they report is an
amalgamation of products that consist of search, ads, commerce, maps, youtube,
google cloud, android, chrome, and google play[1][2].

[1] =>
[https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20170331_alphabet_10Q.pdf](https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20170331_alphabet_10Q.pdf)
pg 30

[2] =>
[https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf](https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf)
pg 28

~~~
supreme_sublime
These are fairly old, but I've gathered they don't make a profit based on
articles like the following.

[http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-
wojc...](http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-wojcicki/)

[https://outline.com/7PG22L](https://outline.com/7PG22L)

~~~
mhudson125
Unfortunately, neither of the links show a concrete indication of where
YouTube profitability is right now.

It was approximated to be break even two years ago but doesn't have a growth
factor as part of the number that is reported in the article, which is a key
metric for determining revenue in the future. Revenue aside, profitability is
extremely difficult to calculate as we don't know what the costs are as
YouTube grows.

You would have made a better case here, but it's still far too old for any
relevance in this discussion: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-
up-to-profit-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-
for-youtube-1424897967)

~~~
supreme_sublime
That was the second link I posted. Either way, YouTube's profitability has
little bearing on the second part of my comment. Unfortunately people decided
to ignore that and focus on YouTube's profitability for some reason.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Youtube videos are getting demonetized based on advertisers not wanting to be
associated with certain things.

However, watching online and TV coverage of the shooting where people were
actually severely injured and someone died, there didn't seem to be a dearth
of advertising. If advertisers don't mind being associated with death and
destruction, I think that when push comes to shove advertisers care more about
reaching people with ads than the content they are associated with.

~~~
ucaetano
Advertisers don't mind having their ads shown next to all violent content,
only to some violent (and some "controversial" content).

Most advertisers won't mind being shown next to a major news channel, but they
might mind being shown next to a gore channel, or a channel run by some more
radical news organizations.

It isn't the content, it's the message. And that's a hard problem.

There's one episode of Mad Man that addresses the same problem. An employee of
the ad agency ends up having to read the scripts of all TV shows in advance to
select the ones that a certain advertiser wouldn't want to be associated with,
for example, those referencing abortion.

~~~
ethanwillis
I think we need to acknowledge that Nasim's content wasn't "gore" and wasn't
even "obscene." At BEST it was just "bizarre" and yet I doubt similar content
like Tim and Eric would get demonetized.

------
apophenia1
This incident has certainly turned out to be a Rorschach test of mass
shootings: Whatever you feel like complaining about, tack it on. "This does
highlight X, caused by people like Y, and we need to address this with Z."

------
tabeth
If the unfairness over YouTube's policies resulted in this kind of outcome, I
wonder what the majority of people will do once they realize[0] that the world
is stacked against them. Tax breaks for the rich, "too big to fail"
organizations, with tax payers footing the bill, etc.

I won't say the "end is nigh", but if there were a "Revolution Clock", akin to
the Doomsday Clock, I think it's slowly nearing midnight.

I've read some stuff that also says that inequality and perceived unfairness
also can hinder your mental health, which no doubt also contributed here.

[0] When I say realize, I mean _realize_. The gap between the poor and the
rich, and the middle-class and the rich is far larger than most realize.

[1] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-
journal-...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-
psychiatry/article/inequality-an-underacknowledged-source-of-mental-illness-
and-distress/985DE9F19CEA4165BE1E85A022BEFDFB)

EDIT:

I should add that I don't think the world is turning to garbage. Rather, said
Revolution Clock simply is getting closer to midnight, as opposed to away from
it. I'd say we're like at maybe 10:00pm.

~~~
imglorp
There is some research that says the traditional tipping point for revolution
is hunger. It seems people put up with a lot of shit, perhaps with misplaced
optimism, until their stomach is affected.

Maybe there's an analog to other tipping points, like price of internet
service, but food seems pretty emotional and primal.

[https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soar...](https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soaring_food_prices_trigger_unrest_across_the_globe_partner/)

~~~
pjc50
I'm sure there's nothing that can go wrong with a population that has three
hundred million guns getting short of food with an ideology that says they
have a right to overthrow the government.

------
JarlUlvi
Beyond the censorship issues & lawsuits, Google regularly gets a pass when
their crummy policies negatively impact people. While it is horrible that some
were hurt in the process, I wonder if this will make Google start approaching
their huge amounts of power with some civility.

~~~
noobermin
While this was flagged to hell, probably due to insensitivity, this will
become a point of discussion going forward.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris, follow up articles appeared
on HN discussing the situation of poor communities on the outskirts of Paris.
Although being sensitive is important and just plain human courtesy, and we
should be civil, it is important for discourse to discuss the situations and
circumstance surrounding such incidents.

Incidentally, today is MLK's death anniversary. After race riots in the 60's,
he famously condemned them, but then said in his "The Other America" speech:

>But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It
would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time,
condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.
These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have
no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.
And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

We need to have the intellectual courage to tolerate this discussion about the
situations surrounding it. While one shouldn't martyrize the shooter here, we
need to be aware of the circumstances that precipitated it.

EDIT: thanks for the vital correction!

~~~
vonzeppelin
>Incidentally, today is MLK's birthday.

Death anniversary, not birthday. His (and my!) birthday is 1/15 which is why
we celebrate MLK day on the most convenient Monday near that.

------
pnutjam
Yet another licensed and legal weapon.

~~~
wyoh
99.9% of people obtaining a weapon legally don't use it to commit atrocities,
but for entertainment. Why should the majority suffer the consequences from
the tiny minority of unstable individuals?

~~~
ctdonath
Not just for entertainment, but a great many for legitimate self-defense. Why
should those rationally feeling need to prepare protection be denied by laws
which ultimately do not stop the unstable deliberately acting to harm?

~~~
etjossem
I recommend looking at the data on this before leaping to the conclusion that
guns are effective at protecting their owners from lethal injury.

In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46
times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and
that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to
resist. [1]

Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns
escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them.

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/)

~~~
ctdonath
I've reviewed many relevant stats. Even the CDC concluded guns save far more
lives than they take.

Remember: "defensive use" includes simply raising doubt that an attacker will
survive, deterring even the consideration of assault. Home invasions just
don't happen in my area, because assailants are likely shot and their demise
celebrated on the news (further deterrence).

~~~
etjossem
I would like to see your sources.

~~~
jrnichols
The CDC itself.

[https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1](https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1)

“Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the
exact number remains disputed. Almost all national survey estimates indicate
that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by
criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more
than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes
involving firearms in 2008.”

It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims
consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared
with those who used other forms of self-defense.

------
mars4rp
"We know that she was upset with YouTube; whether that rises to the level of
terrorism will hopefully be determined in the coming weeks.”

I was really shocked that she is not labeled terrorist yet! and here it is!

~~~
make3
With her being from Iran, I'm also surprised the right hasn't already spun it
that way, as a distraction from the gun control questions.

Not saying she should though obv, she was angry at YouTube for demonetizing
her videos. That's regular YouTube drama taken to the extreme by a crazy
person, not someone part of a group waging jihad on the infidels.

~~~
wyoh
There's no "gun control" question, she was already in the most restrictive
anti gun state.

~~~
make3
the fact that she can get a gun from any other state makes it a question. gun
control laws work when you can't just super easily go to another state to get
a gun, the proof being in the much lower number if gun crimes in every other
industrialized country where the gun laws are tight in the whole country.
That's pretty much every single other industrialized country.

~~~
ctdonath
Interesting that those low-restriction states have such low violent crime. In
fact, those US counties with zero murders (about half) have the most lax gun
control laws.

Were the premise of your comment true, those other states should be the ones
with outlandish murder rates. We have guns, we don't abuse guns; what's up
with the high-gun-control areas being so prone to such violence that when guns
are available they're so readily abused?

~~~
danans
> what's up with the high-gun-control areas being so prone to such violence
> that when guns are available they're so readily abused?

Your reasoning doesn't add up because the factor you are using (lax gun laws
vs strict between states) is far too coarse to make any reasonable inference
from.

California has tight gun restrictions. But high income cities, counties, and
neighborhoods in California (i.e. Palo Alto, Marin, Pacific Heights) with
intact community structures have very low gun violence rates by US standards.

Low income areas with a significant illicit drug trade, high rates of intra-
community trauma, historical abuse by police, and a frayed community
structure, have high rates of gun violence.

The availability of guns, purchased legally or illegally, has a more
pronounced impact on the latter sort of area than the former because the
latter type is more likely to produce interpersonal conflicts which escalate
to the use of guns, because other means of dealing with the conflicts (police,
the court system, community structures) are often less effective or available
for them.

~~~
ctdonath
There's plenty of low-income areas in flyover country, with high gun ownership
- used fairly for defense & provisions. That they can own guns at high rates
responsibly points to cultural choices; don't punish them for bad behavior of
strangers far away. STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE.

------
Rotdhizon
While what this lady did was atrocious, it does highlight a big problem inside
Youtube. That their completely biased, unfair demonetization system is costing
people enough money in ad revenue to ruin online careers. Smaller channels and
politically incorrect channels get flagged pretty much every video, while
bigger, white listed channels that post clear ToS breaking content are still
allowed to rake in ad money. This woman didn't have that many followers in the
respect to what others do, she wasn't making millions of dollars. Here's
someone who was making a few dollars here and there, trying to act like it was
her livelihood that was at stake, like most medium sized content creators with
no real world skills do.

I should follow this up by saying I believe Youtube careers are pathetic, and
shouldn't exist. Just as with Twitch, Youtube has become nothing more than a
money making opportunity that is getting flooded with people who would rather
deceive people than get a real job. Just people who want an easy ride begging
for money. However, for those who do decide to take that route, the way
Youtube flags videos absolutely impacts them. If I were making money, and my
income were to be suddenly cut due to something that was entirely out of my
hands yet fixable, I imagine I would be pretty jaded as well. Losing a few
dollars is no reason to shoot people, this woman was just psycho. You can tell
from one look at her on her site, she has the look of one.

~~~
keo292
Bold talk from anonymous coward

Unless you’ve cured cancer or unlocked new physics, odds are you’re just
peddling skills millions of others have and are not contributing anything
terribly unique.

Just looking to get the right people on your side to scrape together a living
in a different context

~~~
lainga
What does 'anonymous coward' mean in this case? We aren't on El Reg.

