Youtube creators can't make money on videos until they reach a certain threshold. This makes many creators mad, including the woman that opened fire at the video-sharing headquarters. USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — On April 23, 2005, YouTube launched with a mundane video of a man visiting the San Diego Zoo. It lasted 19 seconds and caused no shock waves.
Fast forward 13 years, and the Google-owned platform has morphed into an online juggernaut that, for many Americans of a certain age, is the source for entertainment and news powered by stars that can make a mint.
That seismic shift — from amateur website to big business — has not always been smooth, with advertisers complaining their commercials screen before offensive content and governments concerned that the platform lets extremists rally supporters.
Stuck in the middle are YouTube's creators, a swelling legion of amateur video bloggers and personalities that have attracted waves of young users to the service in exchange for a slice of the company's growing ad revenues.
But recently, some creators have found that the cash is drying up as YouTube gets aggressive about policing its site with new content restrictions.
Those tensions were on tragic display at Tuesday's shooting at YouTube's headquarters. Nasim Aghdam, 37, arrived at the San Bruno complex seeking revenge for what she claimed was YouTube censorship of her workout videos, say police. She injured three employees before killing herself, they say.
"I'm being discriminated and filtered on YouTube," Aghdam said in a video, one of hundreds she posted over eight years that attracted some 30,000 subscribers. "You'll see that my new videos hardly get views, and my old videos that used to get many views stopping getting views."
Aghdam's apparent reaction to YouTube's new policies was violent in the extreme. But her sentiments speak to the frustration — often vented on Twitter or in a YouTube clip — some video creators have been feeling in the wake of the platform's newly aggressive and at times haphazard approach to curating the site.
"This isn't a problem that's going to go away soon because creatives across multiple tech platforms are realizing they have less power than they thought over their online destiny," says Jeremiah Owyang, analyst at Kaleido Insights.
Owyang says those upset with YouTube's new policies aimed at keeping inappropriate videos off the site are "no longer just throwing bricks at Google busses," a reference to a book critical of Google's growth. "It's personal now," he says. "Violence has shown up."
