Earlier this week, a woman opened fire at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. She injured three others before presumably taking her own life.
Early reports stated that this was a lover’s quarrel, others said it was a terrorist attack (due to the shooters race). Both of these ideas are uninformed and entirely false. Police are indicating that the shooter’s motivations were due to censorship and a recent change in the monetization practices held on the popular video-sharing site. Sifting through the shooter’s social media profiles reveal plenty of evidence toward these claims.
Shootings are extremely unfortunate events, and America has a greater problem with them than anywhere else. What’s different about this situation is why it happened.
YouTube is owned by Google, the largest internet corporation in the world. Throughout the last few years, YouTube has been modifying their monetization platform, in ways that continue to hinder content creators. Over the last year or so, many creators report that certain content would be demonetized under the claim of being “non-ad-friendly.” This essentially meant that if you produced content that the platform didn’t agree with, you weren’t getting paid.
The shooter’s YouTube channel recently was demonetized, thanks to the platforms new guidelines. They also had a history of posting videos addressing certain controversies, that would later be flagged and either removed or demonetized.
The actions of a major corporation are beginning to drive its users to dangerous behavior. As consumerism grows, so will problems such as this. We might be getting closer to a SHTF level rebellion.
Until then, stay safe.