Utah Man Arrested For Threats Against YouTube Employees
OREM, Utah (CBS / AP) — A Utah man is accused of making online threats to shoot YouTube employees, going so far as to drive to their Bay Area headquarters with a gun a little over a year after a woman carried out a shooting at the San Bruno office.
David Levon Swanson was released from jail Sunday after posting $100,000 bail. The 35-year-old is facing a felony charge of making terroristic threats.
According to the charging documents, Swanson made threatening comments in September, December and most recently last month.
Authorities became aware of the threats and questioned Swanson at his home last week.
Swanson admitted to driving to YouTube's San Bruno offices earlier this month with a firearm to intimidate workers. He was subsequently arrested.
It was not immediately known if Swanson had an attorney.
The threats are similar to an incident last year when a YouTube user with grievances over the social media company's handling of her account.
In April 2018, Nasim Aghdam shot and wounded three people at YouTube headquarters before taking her own life. Authorities say that Aghdam was angry about the policies and practices of the company.
Authorities later confirmed she visited a gun range before the rampage at YouTube.
Prior to the shooting, police in Mountain View say they located a woman by the name of Nasim Aghdam asleep in a vehicle in the city.
Police said the license plate on her car matched that of a missing person out of Southern California. The woman confirmed her identity and answered their questions. The officers then notified her family that she had been located.
Her father said that when officers located her in Northern California, he warned them that she was angry with YouTube.
On her website postings, there was little doubt of her growing anger toward the online social video posting company. She accused Youtube of reducing her view count, suppressing her and discouraging her from creating content on the video platform.
"Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!" a posting rages. "There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!"
In a now-deleted video, she complained that YouTube began filtering her page and adding age restrictions her videos.
"They want you to be their sex slaves and not think outside the box they designed for you! Your knowledge is their enemy," Aghdam, who went under the name "Nasim Wonder 1" on her YouTube channel, said in a video.
Her family told CBS2 she had been making a living as a YouTube personality. She posted upbeat videos of herself dancing and singing in English, Farsi and Turkish in front of a green screen. She sometimes wore masks and talked about animal rights and going vegan.
© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
