Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized' • Hacker News Board

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#311

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #301

rectang wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The courts are for rich people. Suing a major corporation is all but hopeless. Practically, when you have a business dispute with a major corporation, your only option is to give up.

I've sued several very large corporations over the last 30 years and have to this date come out the winner in each and every case. Yes it cost some money but the pay-off was substantially higher than the money invested in the court case. And no, we were not rich by any definition. In Europe the courts are still accessible for companies that do not have millions of $.

This story doesn't take place in Europe.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#312

Post by kazagistar » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

thefounder wrote: post #116

deftnerd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they're not directly responsible, the problem was entirely of their making. They created a whole new profession (even my 8-year-old son wants to grow up to be a "professional youtubber") and then arbitrarily destroy careers. The created an environment where people could work hard to create their own destiny while giving themselves the ability to destroy those destinies without cause or recourse. It was only a m…

People ahould not put too much trust in youtube-like companies. If you have a youtube career you don't really have a real career/job. You just found a way to make easy bucks. Youtube is not the "internet" of videos. You can have your own website

YouTube has dedicated caching hardware installed at ISPs, for example. How do plan to compete with that kind of infrastructure?

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#313

Post by thomasfortes » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

NeonVice wrote: post #250

thomasfortes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should people be forced to provide for a platform that they find hateful and offensive? You can make a point about government not being allowed to deny groups the freedom of speech, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with private people voting with their wallets to show where they stand in relation to speech that they feel that is threatening to them.

There is a difference between private people voting with their wallets and encouraging a mob to pressure a company to withdraw advertising from a company that they oppose politically.

As far as I know, the woman attacked him and his colleagues personally multiple times, she is a threat to them, they are raising awareness about what is happening and calling for action, they are declaring in a public way that they will not do businness with anyone that supports them.

It's not "encouraging a mob" if someone say "Hey, these companies are advertising with bigots and racists, let's do a boycott to show them that we will not tolerate this".

What you are saying is that they should "shut up and dribble"? Stay quiet with their heads low while they are being constantly attacked?

Calling for a boycott when you don't agree with someone is pretty far from "encouraging a mob" as you put.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#314

Post by fixermark » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

mistersquid wrote: post #269

jacquesm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is - and this goes for all the apologists for this person in this thread - that having your stuff on Youtube isn't a thing you should count on. If you run a small business and you make that business entirely dependent on a third party you are inherently setting yourself up for failure. Whether it is Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Medium or any other user generated content site you give up control the moment y…

As I said in a different subthread, YouTube is in no way responsible for the actions Ms. Nasim took. However, it could be helpful to understand Ms. Nasim's motivations insofar as they stem from losing a source of revenue to which she had no entitlement. To that end, our collective social good might be promoted by platform owners like YouTube giving content-generators greater say over the monetization of their content…

I think we lack evidence that Ms. Nasim's shooting rampage would have been stopped by YouTube changing their policy. Possilby this shooting rampage, but we don't at present have enough evidence to hypothesize that something wouldn't have set her off. She had a lot of anger directed at a lot of targets.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#315

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #278

jacquesm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll be shocked when they realize we too are animals.

Jacques, you are smarter than that. WWII Allies killed Nazis to save humans. They weren't shocked to realize that Nazis were humans.

The de-humanization of both Nazi's from the allied perspective and the Jews from the Nazi perspective is well documented.

So yes, that's exactly how it was.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#316

Post by aninhumer » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #75

aninhumer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever something like this happens, people like to dismiss the situation by saying we can't possibly understand "crazy" people. It avoids having to consider the systemic reasons why something like this can happen. I'd imagine a significant part of it is that we live a society where some people can have their livelihood yanked away from them, with no support structure to help them, leaving them desperate and angry.

Absolutely it makes sense. "That person shoot out random youtube employees therefore youtube should change its helpdesk" argument does not make sense. It makes as much sense as caving to any other form of terrorism. Youtube and its employees are the victim here. Using this to put pressure on them in the "for the safety of your employees" way is incredibly distasteful.

> It makes as much sense as caving to any other form of terrorism.

Addressing the systemic reasons behind hostile actors does not mean "caving" to the actors themselves.

Should we let ISIS take over the Middle East and establish a fascist theocratic state? No, obviously not.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't carefully consider how the past decades of violent imperialist foreign policy might have played a significant part in the conditions that allowed ISIS to rise, and use that to inform our future policy.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#317

Post by morley » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

arkades wrote: post #143

morley wrote: post #94

I'm really surprised at how many of these HN comments are so sympathetic to this murderer's cause. To me, this illustrates how dangerous this type of reporting is, this media obsession with the perpetrators of mass shooting. This is the problem that I feel utterly powerless against. You can make more mental health programs, pass more gun control legislation, pay more for security, but what can you do when the culture…

I largely agree with you. But, about 1% of me, can't help but note that... well, I think there's a reason for people's tendency to give the perpetrator some sympathy. The thing is, we abstract this away into things like "it's not censorship if a private organization declines to monetize the content you freely publish with them," but... let's be clear about what happens here, at the granular ground level: 1) Company c…

> The nutjob isn't a black swan, though: they're an extreme version of the response that a lot of people are having.

I appreciate you laying out your thoughts, but I vehemently disagree with this idea. Like all terrorists, the shooter's actions were grossly disproportionate to their cause. A lot of people were affected by Youtube demonetization, but only one of them chose to perpetrate a violent act in response to it. That's the very definition of a black swan.

The thesis if my main comment is that media coverage that focuses on these shooters (a) makes it seem more common, and (b) legitimizes either their actions or their cause, which causes (c) more people to perpetrate mass shootings in the future.

I'm not saying that Youtube handles demonetization in the best way possible. I'm saying that taking a gun to the problem is completely off the wall, and that this sort of media coverage just adds fuel to the fire. And that the media coverage is just a mirror to the values of our society. And that I'm frustrated by this sort of reaction, and don't have any recourse other than to point out that there's another way to react.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#318

Post by refurb » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #142

danso wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically every company who has ever laid off or fired an employee should expect at some point to fall victim to a mass shooting?

Homicide has long been the number 2 cause of death in the workplace in the U.S. You can find statistics going back as far as 1992. Layoffs are indeed often a motivation. Hence the term, "going postal."

Homicide has long been the number 2 cause of death in the workplace in the U.S.

That stat doesn't pass the sniff test, so I looked up some numbers[1].

In 2016, there were 500 workplace homicides in the US. No where near the 2nd most common cause of death.

[1]https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#319

Post by DanAndersen » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #82

'De-Monetized' suggests that someone who produces a video has an automatic right to income. That's bonkers, it's already quite a service that Youtube allows you to upload your videos to reach an audience that you'd be hard pressed to serve from your own server. They do this for free. In the previous iteration of such platforms all the ad income would go to the owner of the website, not to the rights owners of the vid…

I feel like there are a lot of parallels between these "private" web services that are extremely dominant, and the "company towns" of previous decades/centuries. Workers didn't have a right to dictate what the town could and couldn't do, and if they were fired or felt they weren't getting enough pay they could always pack up and move to a new town or found their own city with their own money like a good bootstrappy entrepreneur... right?

For some people in the new gig economy of attention/viewfarming, they've found themselves dependent on a particular 'company town' online service. I'm not so much of an anarcho-capitalist that I find this situation hunky-dory.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#320

Post by yashap » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #214

INTPenis wrote: post #103

Americans in the comment section are reacting about this woman being a disgruntled user, angry about perceived discrimination from Youtube, down on her luck, suicidal. Me, a european, I'm reacting to how easily she found a gun. I hate to bring up this very toxic debate, my comment will seem like fishing for trouble. Yet you have to understand our perspective. Not every lunatic where I live can find a gun when they ne…

I would be really interested to see statistics about this. I hypothesize that the prevalence of "violent lunatics" is a bigger factor than availability of weapons, i.e. that the US just has more of these people than other places due to something in the media and culture. In other words, if availability of guns were really the most important factor, then wouldn't we expect Europe to have a similar number of attacks bu…

IMO it’s both - America has a lot of violent lunatics, and extremely available guns, which exacerbates the issue. If your society has few violent lunatics, you can probably handle available guns with few additional deaths, but this is clearly not the case in America, where guns are used by psychopaths to kill other Americans at an exceptionally high rate for a developed nation.

Largely removing violent lunatics from society is a way tougher problem than largely removing guns - there are good blueprints to follow re: removing guns, like Australia and the UK. The big impediment here is that guns are deeply engrained in American culture, plus an amendment to the constitution from the late 1700s that is arguably very out of date today. I do understand why America won’t ban or heavily restrict guns, but I strongly disagree with it, and find it sad that Americans are willing to let so many innocents die out of a mix of “don’t take my toys” and “anti-government paranoia.”