On Tuesday afternoon a shooting at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California left four employees badly injured.
The shooter has now been identified as 39-year-old Nasim Aghdam, a YouTube user who felt she had been unfairly discriminated aganst by the company.
Aghdam is believed to have taken her own life after the shooting.
A self-described “vegan activist” whose videos often contained radical views about the treatment of animals by the meat industry, Aghdam felt she was being silenced by the company due to her political views.
“I’m being discriminated against on YouTube, and I’m not the only one,” Aghdam says in a video discovered by TMZ today.
“If you got and check my videos, you’ll see that my new videos hardly get viewed. And my old videos that used to get views have stopped getting views.”
“This is what they are doing to vegan activists, and many other people who try to promote healthy human and smart living,” Aghdam alleged.
“People like me are not good for big businesses, like for animal business, for medicine business and for many other businesses. That’s why they are censoring us.”
Aghdam captioned one of her most recent videos with a written tirade condemning the company’s practices:
“There is no free speech in real world & you will be suppressed for telling the truth that is not supported by the system,” she wrote.
“Videos of targeted users are filtered [and] merely relegated, so that people can hardly see their videos!”
She added:
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!”
Aghdam was particularly irritated by the revelation that an exercise video of hers had been flagged for age-inappropriate content.
She likened the clip to music videos by Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus that had not been flagged despite what she claimed was far more risqué content.
As for reports that Aghdam knew one of the victims, police say they are still gathering information.
“We know very, very little right now, and we probably won’t know more until tomorrow morning,” says a police spokesperson.
One witness claims that Aghdam could be heard shouting “‘Come at me, or come get me!"” during the rampage.
We’ll have further updates on this developing story as more information becomes available.