Police say shooter’s anger over YouTube policies ‘appears to be the motive’
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
People tend to view youtube "de-monetization" act as something out of the blue. Story goes as "evil youtube cornered the market of online videos and now acting like a spoiled child, f--king with people who were making some small buck from their videos".
This is not the case. In fact, for last 2 years large advertisers were getting more and more unhappy and angry about digital advertising, citing the lack of transparency, fraud and lack of brand safety as their main concerns. It was brewing for a long time now.
P&G, the largest advertiser in the world, and trend-setter in general advertising, cut hundreds of millions from their digital budgets in 2017. [0]
Youtube, unlike google search engine, depends on large brands doing "brand advertising", as opposed to "performance advertising". You can't force 10000's of small businesses advertise on youtube, ROI is just not here. It's P&G, Ford, Unilever and others giants who keep the lights on in youtube offices, and giants were clearly revolting. And when they cut spend, they cut it not from youtube only, but from all digital, meaning that google mothership also hurt from their move.
So, youtube tried to save the situation, clumsily. Ads are now appearing in much smaller subset of videos, which are vettoed, and youtube jacked up the prices [1] of such inventory, to make up the lost revenue from long tail of videos.
Take into account the fact that youtube is rumored to be unprofitable or making very modest profit (due to enormous technical costs they have) and you see it more like move out of desperation than anything else.
[0] http://www.adweek.com/digital/procter-gamble-cut-140-million...
[1] https://marketingland.com/report-youtube-set-raise-ad-prices...
But I only see a loose connection between that and what happened. This was a woman driven by likes or money (hard to tell which was more important), and attempted to kill because of this.
This is more like a machine shop owner laying off people because some jobs were moving to Asia and an ex-employee shooting up the offices the next day.
Macro- and micro- economics surely played a part, but the root of the problem was in her head.
If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?
Picking channels that are good for advertising is a service that YouTube does for advertisers.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/why-advertisers-are-pulling-s...
Secondly, there are two sides to this equation. The advertisers aren't paying for ads as charity to Google. They want the billions of views that YouTube gets every day. While I don't know the exact statistics, YouTube definitely seems to be growing in influence where people who are popular on the platform are legitimate celebrities. Advertisers would be foolish to not try to get in on some of the publicity. Now I'm a bit conspiracy theory-ish on this whole thing. I really think that between the advertisers and traditional media there wasn't necessarily a concerted effort where both of them planned to do something together, they were just both acting in their self interest. So when traditional media outlets started publishing the nature of the videos that some ads would play next to, the advertisers thought "Well, this is a great opportunity to strong arm them for some cheaper ads." Meanwhile the traditional media was simply attacking a competitor. It seems to me like there were also some useful idiots at YouTube who saw the so-called terrible things that ads were next to and over corrected. Instead of saying "Okay, well, good luck reaching how many people we do." to advertisers, they rolled over and capitulated. When in my opinion, they really didn't need to. Then again, they know more about the business than I do.
But really pulling ads from too many videos hurts the business too, if ads aren't playing on a video, they are hosting that video for free. It makes absolutely no sense. There is also no evidence of any kind of long term association between advertisements and content. You don't see a coke ad before an ISIS beheading video and think "Huh, Coke endorses ISIS".
In fact, in each of the filings for 2016 & 2017 the revenue they report is an amalgamation of products that consist of search, ads, commerce, maps, youtube, google cloud, android, chrome, and google play[1][2].
[1] => https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20170331_alphabet_10Q.pdf pg 30
[2] => https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf pg 28
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-wojc...
It was approximated to be break even two years ago but doesn't have a growth factor as part of the number that is reported in the article, which is a key metric for determining revenue in the future. Revenue aside, profitability is extremely difficult to calculate as we don't know what the costs are as YouTube grows.
You would have made a better case here, but it's still far too old for any relevance in this discussion: https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f...
Okay, there was no second-of-all...
Ad quality I am getting (long cheap ads on companies unlikely to be rich) confirm that.
Because then advertisers have to do more work, and spend less money; doing the picking for the advertisers in a way which keeps them happy with the results is a key part of what advertisers are paying YouTube for.
> This babysitting attitude makes so many creators unhappy
The creators it makes happy are predominantly the ones that aren't supplying YouTube with content that is valuable in its main revenue-generating function.
> If a video is allowed on YT, why not make more money off of it?
So, YT should ban videos rather than demonetizing them?
And now we're seeing an unintended consequence of that.
I get the free speech argument and I am 110% behind that argume at least when it comes to not banning people for saying whatever they want on what is indisputably by now a public platform.
However the monetization is another issue, if we side with free speech then the ads that run are the free speech of the advertisers they have the final say in where and how those ads run.
The problem is that for the most part there aren't that many advertiser anymore especially on the big platforms. The only times I ever get ads is when I use YouTube on my iPhone and i try to avoid using the app because of them (I didn't log into YT with my account just because I can't adblock the YT ads).
And what ads you get? the same 10-20 big brands all over, big soda, big car, big sports channel, big bank, big store chain that's it.
Regardless where you lean left or right large companies that run on essentially the most inoffensive vanilla consensus possible will rather avoid you and YT demonitizes plenty of far left (and simply weird) channels also.
But as some one who is pro-free speech as it gets as in I stoutly believe that there should be no legal limitation on speech at all including what people call "hate speech" (there will be hate regardless and no laws will ever save us from that) I can't find a single argument that to limit agency of YouTube and advertisers in any way that would improve the freedom of speech rather than diminish it.
Now banning people because they like to shoot guns, pro trump, believe in aliens, anti-vaxxers, socialists, communists, maoists or w/e is something that I strongly believe that platforms like YouTube should not practice.
YouTube was essentially built by weird and disturbing crap that people uploaded over the years (heck for the longest time YouTube and at the time Stage6 if anyone remembers DIVX's competitor was essentially Netflix for the masses, and you can still find plenty of pirated content on YT today to watch) until it became the monster it is, after squashing all competition they simply can't just say sorry folks you have to play by our rules now despite the fact that we got where we are by essentially violating all of them.
The problem with social media is that they don't have people telling the public that their ideas are crap, so everyone thinks they're important.
Editing means people are going to be unhappy. You are taking a certain viewpoint, and are literally filtering out incompatible expressions. The people that get edited out, they'll get mad, but they'll have to deal with it, like the millions of other people that get edited out by various editors around the world and deal with it appropriately.
Facebook tried to have it all, but advertisers only want something specific.
Editors don't scale.
However, watching online and TV coverage of the shooting where people were actually severely injured and someone died, there didn't seem to be a dearth of advertising. If advertisers don't mind being associated with death and destruction, I think that when push comes to shove advertisers care more about reaching people with ads than the content they are associated with.
Most advertisers won't mind being shown next to a major news channel, but they might mind being shown next to a gore channel, or a channel run by some more radical news organizations.
It isn't the content, it's the message. And that's a hard problem.
There's one episode of Mad Man that addresses the same problem. An employee of the ad agency ends up having to read the scripts of all TV shows in advance to select the ones that a certain advertiser wouldn't want to be associated with, for example, those referencing abortion.
Can’t blame them for not wanting to take the risk.
Maybe there's an analog to other tipping points, like price of internet service, but food seems pretty emotional and primal.
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/09/real_life_hunger_games_soar...
That said, you live in NYC, and so for you the homeless rate has gone WAY up over the last year, to around 4000 people from just 2800 or so last year.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris, follow up articles appeared on HN discussing the situation of poor communities on the outskirts of Paris. Although being sensitive is important and just plain human courtesy, and we should be civil, it is important for discourse to discuss the situations and circumstance surrounding such incidents.
Incidentally, today is MLK's death anniversary. After race riots in the 60's, he famously condemned them, but then said in his "The Other America" speech:
>But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
We need to have the intellectual courage to tolerate this discussion about the situations surrounding it. While one shouldn't martyrize the shooter here, we need to be aware of the circumstances that precipitated it.
EDIT: thanks for the vital correction!
Death anniversary, not birthday. His (and my!) birthday is 1/15 which is why we celebrate MLK day on the most convenient Monday near that.
Probably not. Whenever there's a shooting, there seems to be a strong pressure to disregard the idea of addressing the shooter's motives. If anything, I expect Youtube's demonetization policies to attract more sympathy and support, since they were victimized on account of them.
Honestly I can’t figure out why anyone even cares what the motive was. Doesn’t undo the harm done. The attempt to “understand” is too close to “excusing”. Which then further motivates others to use the same methods.
Secondly, how negatively effected? They stopped paying her for her content. So what. If you buy a Google phone, does google have a right to expect you will buy the next model, and if you don’t you are ‘negatively affecting’ them?
The amount of first world entitlement in this and many other comments here is appalling.
Even were guns nationally banned, that she decided to proceed with mass murder - showing enough signs of danger far enough in advance that she was reported to & interviewed by police - there were a multitude of ways of carrying out the attack, including by buying contraband weapons. Other products are completely illegal in this country, with enormous suppression activity, yet are widely available; no reason to believe a ban would somehow render guns unobtainable via a few hundred dollars discretely exchanged in the wrong side of town.
What's pity is the victims were[0] specifically denied a right to armed self-defense, under threat of harm. She was the rare one who snapped, and in doing so violated a plethora of "reasonable restrictions" to cause grave harm; nobody seems to notice the enormous numbers likewise armed yet never harm anyone - a few happening to stop such attacks early.
[0] - summarizing, details beyond a mere comment.
In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to resist. [1]
Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them.
Remember: "defensive use" includes simply raising doubt that an attacker will survive, deterring even the consideration of assault. Home invasions just don't happen in my area, because assailants are likely shot and their demise celebrated on the news (further deterrence).
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1
“Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared with those who used other forms of self-defense.
Reliable studies show defensive gun use in 100k-1 million incidents per year in the US.
https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shoo...
That's not "exception to the rule".
These are not hard stats, they’re self reports from people who had occasions where they felt safer carrying. Peak confirmation bias. Of course we can find 100k people whose guns made them feel safer once.
But that’s not the question we are trying to answer. We want to know if you are actually protected by owning a firearm. The evidence suggests it has quite the opposite effect.
Your quote is referring to the study where - "used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone “almost certainly would have been killed""
In context the sentence you have quoted simply means the researchers could not be certain that the participants would have died if not for the gun defence.
It is in no way suggesting that they were not legitimate uses of self defence with a firearm.
I finally had the time to read the study and it's got plenty of problems. Painting it as more legitimate than the dozens of studies showing hundreds of thousands of defensive firearm usages is inane.
For example the differences between the case and control groups:
"compared with control participants, shooting case participants were":
- "more frequently working in high-risk occupations"
- "had a greater frequency of prior arrest."
- "significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs"
- "more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking"
Gun owners and their families are so much more likely to be harmed by a gun they own than be protected by it that it’s apaling. How can you possibly justify promoting that, knowing the balance of risks you are advocating people expose themselves and their families to?
See my above comment.
Of course the flaw in your argument is that the only significant reason people need to have guns to protect themselves, is because other people have guns. Take away everyone’s guns, and the absurdity of your argument dissolves itself. And yes, it is possible to remove most weapons in criminal hands. Many countries successfully do this. The high levels of access to guns by criminals is only enabled by a pervasive gun culture.
We all do something dangerous and fairly antisocial. But only one of those things tends to be demonized.
Smoking? Skateboarding outside of private or dedicated places? Heck, even drinkers, from your list, are often demonized.
So, no, your “only one” is not accurate.
Also, if you find shooting guns entertaining, you can keep doing that even in the countries with the strictest gun control laws. I lived in Australia post-1996 and still shot guns on a number of occasions.
In addition, if this truly was a mental health problem, Congress could increase funding for mental health treatment by the end of the week, Trump could sign it by the middle of next week, and we could see an increase in people getting treatment by the end of next month. The fact that we're not seeing that leads me to believe that most know this isn't as much of a mental health problem as people think.
Other countries prescribe anti-depressant medication in similar quantities to the US, and those countries don't have the same problems of violence that the US does.
I know the YouTube incident, specifically, was not a mass-shooting incident (4+ casualties, not including the shooter) but the comment you replied to specifically mentioned mass-shooting.
That males are overrepresented seems fairly self-evident, but is there a noted link between DV, TBI, and addiction(s) with mass-shootings? I've never heard that angle.
The damage truly depends on the type of ammunition used (as well as caliber). FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) ammunition, what seems to be described in the article you referenced, is a non-expanding type of ammunition, typically causing less destruction than expanding types such as HP (Hallow Point), which flatten and expand on impact.
Muzzle velocities from a rifle are significantly higher than handguns, which does translate into more kinetic energy. The additional energies in a rifle cartridge will cause more shock damage to organs, as described in the article, however.
HP ammunition (not commonly used in rifles) is designed to be devastatingly lethal - specifically designed to leave very large wounds in the target, which have little hope of closing/repairing the wound.
In the spectrum from full rights to all weapons, to absolute gun control, allowing access to these handguns (where most wounds are survivable, there is less range, and lower magazine capacity) but restricting assault rifles (high muzzle velocities create injuries that are nearly impossible to survive, high magazine count, sometimes higher discharge rate) seems like a reasonable point to draw the line, and also complies with existing case law around the second amendment.
This would have been much, much worse with an AR15 type weapon, with likely far more deaths.
I was really shocked that she is not labeled terrorist yet! and here it is!
Not saying she should though obv, she was angry at YouTube for demonetizing her videos. That's regular YouTube drama taken to the extreme by a crazy person, not someone part of a group waging jihad on the infidels.
Were the premise of your comment true, those other states should be the ones with outlandish murder rates. We have guns, we don't abuse guns; what's up with the high-gun-control areas being so prone to such violence that when guns are available they're so readily abused?
Your reasoning doesn't add up because the factor you are using (lax gun laws vs strict between states) is far too coarse to make any reasonable inference from.
California has tight gun restrictions. But high income cities, counties, and neighborhoods in California (i.e. Palo Alto, Marin, Pacific Heights) with intact community structures have very low gun violence rates by US standards.
Low income areas with a significant illicit drug trade, high rates of intra-community trauma, historical abuse by police, and a frayed community structure, have high rates of gun violence.
The availability of guns, purchased legally or illegally, has a more pronounced impact on the latter sort of area than the former because the latter type is more likely to produce interpersonal conflicts which escalate to the use of guns, because other means of dealing with the conflicts (police, the court system, community structures) are often less effective or available for them.
Not all that surprising. The low restriction states also tend to be low-urban-population proportion; many types of crime increasing in urban environments is a long observed thing across pretty much all human societies, for which density, relative anonymity, and Stark and omnipresent socioeconomic contrasts have all been suggested as contributing factors.
> In fact, those US counties with zero murders (about half) have the most lax gun control laws.
Well, sure, they also mostly have populations below (often by an order of magnitude or more) the level at which the expected number of murders at the national rate would be 1.
I've worked places where several employees (owners included) were known always armed. No big deal. Safety was assured precisely because they were.
There's also no evidence she did obtain the gun from out of state, so that's a bit of a straw man to begin with.
I should follow this up by saying I believe Youtube careers are pathetic, and shouldn't exist. Just as with Twitch, Youtube has become nothing more than a money making opportunity that is getting flooded with people who would rather deceive people than get a real job. Just people who want an easy ride begging for money. However, for those who do decide to take that route, the way Youtube flags videos absolutely impacts them. If I were making money, and my income were to be suddenly cut due to something that was entirely out of my hands yet fixable, I imagine I would be pretty jaded as well. Losing a few dollars is no reason to shoot people, this woman was just psycho. You can tell from one look at her on her site, she has the look of one.
I agree that these careers are very problematic - the point and the problem is that these are typical of many gig-economy schemes at this point and this is a problem of the whole economy, not individuals choose these activities.
"Shouldn't exist" implies others having undue power over the destiny of others. You may not like certain content, but none of your business deciding that others shouldn't see it (beyond the likes of child porn). If what one does is sufficiently valuable to others, enjoy the career.
And the murderer has enough going against her legitimately (starting with being a murderer) without disparaging her looks. Not everyone is blessed with something better than "resting bitch face".
Unless you’ve cured cancer or unlocked new physics, odds are you’re just peddling skills millions of others have and are not contributing anything terribly unique.
Just looking to get the right people on your side to scrape together a living in a different context
Would you say the same for anyone who works in video production? How about someone who was making TV shows?