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Furious at YouTube, passionate about fitness and veganism: Shooter left warning signs, questions

April 5, 2018 by  
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Furious at YouTube, passionate about fitness and veganism: Shooter left warning signs, questions



In one video, Nasim Najafi Aghdam refers to herself as a “ninja” before making a series of odd, stunted motions spliced between clips from the reality series “America’s Got Talent.” In another video, she sports a blond pixie-cut wig while mocking people who choose to eat meat.

In yet another video, the rail-thin and raven-haired Aghdam says in Farsi that she has no “specific physical or mental illness,” but says she lives “in a planet that is filled with illness, and disorder and perversion and injustice.”

Police are still trying to determine exactly what led the 39-year-old San Diego woman to bring a gun to YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., where she shot and wounded three people Tuesday before killing herself. But the woman’s fury with YouTube — which she believed was intentionally suppressing her quirky collection of dance, recipe and exercise clips — has emerged as the most likely motive, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters Wednesday morning.

As the investigation unfolded, questions lingered about what, if any, chance law enforcement officials might have had to intervene before the attack. Some family members have said they told police she was angry with YouTube and might have planned on traveling to the company’s headquarters when they filed a missing person’s report earlier this week.

Few of Aghdam’s videos remain available online, as her Facebook and Instagram accounts were deactivated within hours of the shooting. Her personal website, titled “Nasime Sabz,” which roughly translates to “green breeze” or “Nasim the green” also vanished. Aghdam’s YouTube account had been shut down “due to multiple or severe violations” of the company’s policies, but it was unclear when that ban took effect.

Nearly four dozen of Aghdam’s videos remained viewable on the website Daily Motion until they were removed Wednesday morning. The footage is a strange pastiche of parody clips, workout videos and vegan recipe suggestions, many of which are flagged by a warning not to steal her content.

Pulsing electronic music plays in the background of several of the clips, as Aghdam stares expressionless at the camera, almost giving off the vibe of a nervous karaoke performance. She sometimes refers to herself as a “vegan athlete” before flexing muscles and launching into a series of pushups. In one video, she can been seen dancing and wearing a sheep mask in front of a picture of a frowning cow before the words “Go Vegan, Go Healthy Humane” appear across the screen.

In a screed posted to a website that has become a subject of the investigation, Aghdam complained that YouTube employees had purposefully limited the number of people who viewed her videos, and criticized the practice of paying for “likes” and views on other social media platforms such as Instagram.

Her complaints about unfair compensation were similar to those of some YouTube creators who have publicly criticized the platform.

“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!” she wrote.

About two weeks ago, Aghdam vented to her family that YouTube had stopped compensating her for her videos, her father told the Bay Area News Group. Ismail Aghdam said the family had called police Monday to report his daughter missing because she hadn’t answered her phone for two days. He said he told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company.

The father provided reporters with a statement saying Aghdam’s family was in “absolute shock and can’t make sense” of the violence. “Our family would like to express their utmost regret, sorrow for what happened to innocent victims. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families,” the statement said. “We are praying for speedy recovery of the injured and ask God to bestow patience upon all persons hurt in this horrific senseless act.”

“She never hurt one animal, one ant. I don’t know how she did … this,” he said while handing out the statement. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe it.”

A woman who identified herself as a family member but would not give her name said Aghdam had been angry with YouTube for nearly a year because she felt the company was keeping her from spreading a message promoting a vegan lifestyle. Relatives called police to warn them about her frustrations.

“They said she was angry at YouTube, so be careful,” the woman said, adding that police promised they would monitor Aghdam, “but they didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry for those people [she] shot,” the woman said as she made her way through a throng of reporters to visit the family in Menifee, in Riverside County.

Aghdam entered the country as a refugee roughly two decades ago, a family member said. In one of her videos, she said she was born in Urmia, Iran — where she and other members of her Baha’i faith face discrimination — and that her family had spent a year and a half in Turkey.

Lt. Karen Stubkjaer, the media relations director for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, confirmed that a deputy took a missing persons report from Ismail Aghdam and entered that information into a national missing persons database on April 2. Stubkjaer would not confirm the father’s account that he warned the Sheriff’s Department about his daughter’s anger toward YouTube, and did not answer additional questions about the incident.

Mountain View, Calif., police made contact with Aghdam about 1:40 a.m. Tuesday, roughly 12 hours before the shooting, when they found her sleeping in a car with a license plate connected to the missing persons report. Officers contacted the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which described Aghdam as “at risk” because she had never gone missing before, according to a statement issued by the Mountain View Police Department.

Aghdam told police she had left home due to family issues and was living out of her vehicle until she found a job. She did not “mention anything about YouTube, if she was upset with them, or that she had planned to harm herself or others,” according to the statement.

“Throughout our entire interaction with her, she was calm and cooperative,” the statement read.

Mountain View Police contacted Aghdam’s father and brother after talking with her. The department said her relatives did not mention a potential threat against YouTube or the fact that Aghdam may have been armed. An hour later, Ismail Aghdam called police again to say that his daughter was upset that YouTube had “done something” to her videos, adding that the change might have been connected to her trip to the Bay Area.

“At no point did her father or brother mention anything about potential acts of violence or a possibility of Aghdam lashing out as a result of her issues with her videos,” the statement read. “They remained calm throughout this second phone call.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Barberini said police were executing search warrants at two Southern California residences connected to Aghdam. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were helping serve search warrants at several locations, including San Diego and Menifee. The warrants were obtained by the San Bruno Police Department, but the ATF was involved because of the “nexus of firearms,” said Ginger Colbrun, ATF spokeswoman for Southern California.

Barberini said police were also searching Aghdam’s vehicle. Aghdam apparently went to a local gun range and fired the weapon used in the attack on Tuesday morning, Barberini said. He described the weapon as a Smith Wesson 9-millimeter handgun, which Aghdam was legally allowed to possess.

Barberini said she entered the YouTube campus through a parking garage, after parking her vehicle near a business close to the company’s headquarters. Police have not established a specific link between Aghdam and the victims in Tuesday’s shooting, and it was unclear if she shot randomly when she opened fire in the courtyard.

Two of the victims have been released from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, according to a statement issued by the hospital. A third victim, identified only as a male in his 30s, remains hospitalized in serious condition.

Foruzan Ghodrattolah, Aghdam’s uncle, said he was shocked when he learned what his niece had done. Aghdam had dedicated her life to animals, according to her uncle, who said if she found an insect in her home she would not harm it.

“She would always take the insect outside and free it,” Ghodrattolah said.



Lien reported from San Bruno, Esquivel reported from Menifee, Calif., and Queally, Winton and Parvini reported from Los Angeles. Staff writers Melissa Etehad, Joseph Serna and Alene Tchekmedyian in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

james.queally@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

tracey.lien@latimes.com

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

UPDATES:

2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with a family statement.

1:40 p.m.: This article was updated with additional statements from Nasim Aghdam’s videos.

12:40 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information about the investigation.

11:35 a.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from one of Nasim Aghdam’s relatives, the Mountain View Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

10:40 a.m.: This article was updated with details on search warrants being served.

10 a.m.: This article was updated with information from the San Bruno Police Department, hospital officials and comments from Nasim Aghdam’s uncle.

8:30 a.m.: This article was updated with the removal of Nasim Aghdam’s videos on Daily Motion.

This article was originally published at 8:05 a.m.

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Highlights and audio from Zuckerberg’s emotional Q&A on scandals

April 5, 2018 by  
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“This is going to be a never-ending battle” said Mark Zuckerberg. He just gave the most candid look yet into his thoughts about Cambridge Analytica, data privacy, and Facebook’s sweeping developer platform changes today during a conference call with reporters. Sounding alternately vulnerable about his past negligence and confident about Facebook’s strategy going forward, Zuckerberg took nearly an hour of tough questions.

You can read a transcript here and listen to a recording of the call below:

The CEO started the call by giving his condolences to those affected by the shooting at YouTube yesterday. He then delivered this mea culpa on privacy:

We’re an idealistic and optimistic company . . . but it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well . . . We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is and that was a huge mistake. That was my mistake.

It’s not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive and that they’re bringing people together.  It’s not enough just to give people a voice, we have to make sure that people are not using that voice to hurt people or spread misinformation. And it’s not enough to give people tools to sign into apps, we have to make sure that all those developers protect people’s information too.

It’s not enough to have rules requiring that they protect the information. It’s not enough to believe them when they’re telling us they’re protecting information. We actually have to ensure that everyone in our ecosystem protects people’s information.”

This is Zuckerberg’s strongest statement yet about his and Facebook’s failure to anticipate worst-case scenarios, which has led to a string of scandals that are now decimating the company’s morale. Spelling out how policy means nothing without enforcement, and pairing that with a massive reduction in how much data app developers can request from users makes it seem like Facebook is ready to turn over a new leaf.

Here are the highlights from the rest of the call:

On Zuckerberg calling fake news’ influence “crazy”: “I clearly made a mistake by just dismissing fake news as crazy — as having an impact . . . it was too flippant. I never should have referred to it as crazy.

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

On deleting Russian trolls: Not only did Facebook delete 135 Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to Russian government-connected election interference troll farm the Internet Research Agency, as Facebook announced yesterday. Zuckerberg said Facebook removed “a Russian news organization that we determined was controlled and operated by the IRA”.

On the 87 million number: Regarding today’s disclosure that up to 87 million people had their data improperly access by Cambridge Analytica, “it very well could be less but we wanted to put out the maximum that we felt it could be as soon as we had that analysis.” Zuckerberg also referred to The New York Times’ report, noting that “We never put out the 50 million number, that was other parties.”

Facebook admits Cambridge Analytica hijacked data on up to 87M users

On users having their public info scraped: Facebook announced this morning that “we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped” via its search by phone number or email address feature and account recovery system. Scammers abused these to punch in one piece of info and then pair it to someone’s name and photo . Zuckerberg said search features are useful in languages where it’s hard to type or a lot of people have the same names. But “the methods of react limiting this weren’t able to prevent malicious actors who cycled through hundreds of thousands of IP addresses and did a relatively small number of queries for each one, so given that and what we know to day it just makes sense to shut that down.”

On when Facebook learned about the scraping and why it didn’t inform the public sooner:  “We looked into this and understood it more over the last few days as part of the audit of our overall system”, Zuckerberg declining to specify when Facebook first identified the issue. [Update: Facebook later specified that the sophisticated scraping had been picked up in the past few weeks during the audit, recently confirmed, and that the company disclosed the situation as soon as it had details ready.]

On implementing GDPR worldwide: Zuckerberg refuted a Reuters story from yesterday saying that Facebook wouldn’t bring GDPR privacy protections to the U.S. and elsewhere. Instead he says, “we’re going to make all the same controls and settings available everywhere, not just in Europe.”

Zuckerberg says Facebook will offer GDPR privacy controls everywhere

On if board has discussed him stepping down as chairman: “Not that I’m aware of” Zuckerberg said happily.

On if he still thinks he’s the best person to run Facebook: “Yes. Life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out what you need to do to move forward . . . I think what people should evaluate us on is learning from our mistakes . . .and if we’re building things people like and that make their lives better . . . there are billions of people who love the products we’re building.”

On the Boz memo and prioritizing business over safety: “The things that makes our product challenging to manage and operate are not the tradeoffs between people and the business. I actually think those are quite easy because over the long-term, the business will be better if you serve people. I think it would be near-sighted to focus on short-term revenue over people, and I don’t think we’re that short-sighted. All the hard decisions we have to make are tradeoffs between people. Different people who use Facebook have different needs. Some people want to share political speech that they think is valid, and other people feel like it’s hate speech . . . we don’t always get them right.”

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour

On whether Facebook can audit all app developers: “We’re not going to be able to go out and necessarily find every bad use of data” Zuckerberg said, but confidently said “I actually do think we’re going to be be able to cover a large amount of that activity.

On whether Facebook will sue Cambridge Analytica: “We have stood down temporarily to let the [UK government] do their investigation and their audit. Once that’s done we’ll resume ours … and ultimately to make sure none of the data persists or is being used improperly. And at that point if it makes sense we will take legal action if we need to do that to get people’s information.”

Cambridge Analytica denies accessing data on 87M Facebook users…claims 30M

On how Facebook will measure its impact on fixing privacy: Zuckerberg wants to be able to measure “the prevalence of different categories of bad content like fake news, hate speech, bullying, terrorism. . . That’s going to end up being the way we should be held accountable and measured by the public . . .  My hope is that over time the playbook and scorecard we put out will also be followed by other internet platforms so that way there can be a standard measure across the industry.”

On whether Facebook should try to earn less money by using less data for targeting “People tell us if they’re going to see ads they want the ads to be good . . . that the ads are actually relevant to what they care about . . On the one hand people want relevant experiences, and on the other hand I do think there’s some discomfort with how data is used in systems like ads. But I think the feedback is overwhelmingly on the side of wanting a better experience. Maybe it’s 95-5.”

Facebook rewrites Terms of Service, clarifying device data collection

On whether #DeleteFacebook has had an impact on usage or ad revenue: “I don’t think there’s been any meaningful impact that we’ve observed…but it’s not good.”

On the timeline for fixing data privacy: “This is going to be a never-ending battle. You never fully solve security. It’s an arms race” Zuckerberg said early in the call. Then to close QA, he said “I think this is a multi-year effort. My hope is that by the end of this year we’ll have turned the corner on a lot of these issues and that people will see that things are getting a lot better.”

Overall, this was the moment of humility, candor, and contrition Facebook desperately needed. Users, developers, regulators, and the company’s own employees have felt in the dark this last month, but Zuckerberg did his best to lay out a clear path forward for Facebook. His willingness to endure this question was admirable, even if he deserved the grilling.

The company’s problems won’t disappear, and its past transgressions can’t be apologized away. But Facebook and its leader have finally matured past the incredulous dismissals and paralysis that characterized its response to past scandals. It’s ready to get to work.

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