Cii radio| Ayesha Ismail|04 April 2018| 17 Rajab 1439
The suspect in a gun attack at YouTube’s HQ in California had expressed anger over its treatment of her video postings, media reports say.
The woman identified by police as the attacker who wounded three people at YouTube’s headquarters in California was a vegan blogger who accused the video-sharing service of discriminating against her, according to her online profile.
Police said 39-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam from San Diego was behind Tuesday’s shooting at YouTube’s offices in Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco, where the company owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google employs nearly 2,000 people.
A man was in critical condition and two women were seriously wounded in the attack, which ended when Aghdam shot and killed herself.
“The San Bruno Police Department is investigating a motive for this shooting. At this time there is no evidence that the shooter knew the victims of this shooting or that individuals were specifically targeted,” police said in a statement.
Aghdam’s online profile shows she was a vegan activist who ran a website called NasimeSabz.com, meaning “Green Breeze” in Persian, where she posted about Persian culture and veganism, as well as long passages critical of YouTube.
A screenshot of a video posted on Aghnam’s YouTube channel before it was taken down on Tuesday, showed her complaining that “YouTube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!”
YouTube spokeswoman Jessica Mason could not immediately be reached for comment.
The woman’s father Ismail Aghdam told the Bay Area News Group that he had warned police his daughter might be heading to YouTube as she “hated” the company.
Around lunchtime the shooter approached an outdoor patio and dining courtyard on the campus and began to fire before entering the building, police said.
The website NasimeSabz.com, which media said was linked to the attacker, had several posts about Persian culture and veganism, interspersed with screeds against YouTube.
Those complaints included claims the company was not sharing enough revenue with people who create videos for the platform.
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube or any other video-sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to,” read one posting on the site.
A YouTube account in the name of Nasime Sabz was deleted on Tuesday evening.
A US government security official told Reuters there was no known connection to terrorism.
There are hundreds of mass shootings every year in the United States. A national debate around tighter curbs on gun ownership has intensified since the massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school in February shocked the public.
Source – Times live
