YouTube plans to beef up security for employees four months after a woman opened fire

Jeff Chiu/AP

Officers stand in front of a YouTube sign near offices in San Bruno, Calif., Tuesday, April 3, 2018. A woman opened fire at YouTube headquarters Tuesday, setting off a panic among employees and wounding several people before fatally shooting herself, police and witnesses said.

• YouTube managers have told officials in San Bruno, California, that they intend to bulk up security at the company's headquarters, the city's community development director told Business Insider.
• Some of the upgrades come as YouTube seeks to expand its San Bruno campus. 
• The talks follow the April shooting attack on YouTube by a  38-year-old, disgruntled  video creator.    

YouTube managers have spoken to San Bruno city officials about beefing up office security at headquarters, David Woltering, the city's community development director, told Business Insider on Monday. 

Woltering and his staff have had discussions with YouTube representatives "about various measures to better secure points of access to their facilities here in San Bruno," he said in a statement. "These measures include fencing, increased surveillance, and improved access controls." 

Woltering was responding to questions posed to him last week when the city unveiled development plans for the area surrounding YouTube's headquarters. YouTube seeks to expand its office space, add thousands of workers, as well as build more parking facilities. It's not yet clear if YouTube will make some of the sought-after security upgrades part of this expansion. 

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

David Woltering, the community development director for the city of San Bruno, discusses plans to expand the area around YouTube's HQ.

YouTube was not immediately available for comment. 

Woltering said that YouTube began bolstering security at the San Bruno campus in the form of adding larger numbers of "on-site security personnel," four months ago, immediately after Nasim Aghdam arrived there on April 3 armed with a 9 mm and opened fire on employees, wounding three. She later killed herself.

Aghdam's attack is believed to be the first shooting at YouTube but employees have received numerous death threats going back more than a decade, Business Insider reported after the shooting.  

As YouTube's popularity has grown and as some video creators have become more dependent on the ad revenue their clips generate, the service is often accused of harboring a wide range of biases against one group or another. Police have said that Aghdam was a disgruntled YouTube video creator who believed the video service was discriminating against her because of her strong views on animal rights.

On Monday, fans of political commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones took to online message boards to claim YouTube was part of a left-wing plot to silence conservative voices.  YouTube had followed Facebook, Spotify and Apple in removing Jones content from its site for violating their terms of service. 

"Alex Jones and Infowars are a national treasure!," wrote one Twitter user.  "YouTube, Google, and Fakebook are cowardly leftist criminals."

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