‘I’m going to destroy you’: Employees who worked at YouTube say violent threats from volatile ‘creators’ have been going on for years

By Greg Sandoval

Aghdam was the 38-year-old, disgruntled YouTube video creator who arrived at the company’s San Bruno, California headquarters on April 3 and began blasting away with a 9mm handgun. She wounded three staffers before she killed herself. Police say leading up to the shooting Aghdam, from San Diego, Calif., believed YouTube sought to censor her and ruin her life.

This kind of violence is unprecedented in YouTube’s 13-year-history, though Aghdam’s anger and paranoia aren’t unique among the millions of people who create and post videos to the site, according to five former YouTube employees. In exclusive interviews, they told Business Insider that going back to the service’s earliest days, frustrated creators — seething over one of YouTube’s policy changes or the other — have threatened staffers with violence.

Typically the threats were delivered via email. At least once, a video creator confronted a YouTube employee face-to-face and promised he would “destroy” him. In another instance, a man enraged by the suspension of his account, promised to harm Mia Quagliarello, YouTube’s first community manager, and her family. The person created a crude web page that was filled with menacing images and slurs against Quagliarello and her family. In an interview, Quagliarello said company managers considered the situation serious enough to station an armed guard outside her home for three days.

“I forwarded (the threats) to Google security and they took it super seriously,” said Quagliarello, who worked at YouTube from 2006 to 2011. “They sent over someone, like an ex-cop type, to sit on my block, like 24-7.”