The father of the suspected YouTube HQ shooter, Nasim Aghdam, said that “she was angry” with the company for censoring the videos she posted on YouTube, preventing her from receiving payment for any content.
Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, told the Mercury News on Tuesday that he had warned police that she might go to YouTube’s headquarters after the family reported her missing. He said that his daughter “hated” the company. Police located Nasim Aghdam, 39, in the early morning hours of Tuesday and informed the family that the situation was “under control.” Nasim ended up shooting three people before killing herself inside YouTube’s facilities the following afternoon, authorities said.
In an interview with NBC, Ismail Aghdam said that YouTube “stopped everything and now she has no income.” Police said they believe YouTube’s “policies and practices” was Nasim Aghdam’s motive, and said there was no evidence that she was connected to any individuals at YouTube’s facilities. Nasim was a prolific user of social media, including YouTube, and felt slighted by the platform’s censorship, which she claimed spread to other social media channels, too. YouTube users can be paid for posting videos that are accompanied by advertisements, but the company can choose to “demonetize” videos the platform feels are not advertisement-friendly.
“All my youtube channels got filtered by youtube so my videos hardly get views and it is called ‘merely relegation,'” she wrote in a March 18 Instagram post. “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!!?”
According to the Mercury News, Nasim Aghdam often posted videos featuring “strange workout video clips, graphic animal abuse videos and vegan cooking tutorials.” Her account, along with her Facebook and Instagram pages, were taken down late Tuesday.
Nasim’s father told the outlet that she loved animals and was a vegan activist. He said that she had never harmed anyone until the day of the shooting, and was unsure how she obtained a firearm.
Authorities are still investigating the incident.
