YouTube Removes Videos Showing Atrocities in Syria<br />“Some have risked their lives, others have given their lives to document the atrocities and document human rights violations.”<br />If YouTube takes these videos down, Mr. Hiatt said, the platform risks losing “the<br />richest source of information about human rights violations in closed societies.”<br />Organizations that use such videos in their research regularly download copies and share them among themselves,<br />but journalists and smaller groups do not have the same technical resources and therefore rely on YouTube to host the videos.<br />“When the conflict in Syria started, independent media broke down and Syrians themselves have taken to YouTube to post news of the conflict,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, a London-based organization<br />that tracks international airstrikes and their effect on civilians.<br />“There are probably 200 or so civil-society organizations working on Syria alone,” said Keith Hiatt, a vice president of Benetech, which provides tools for human rights investigations,<br />and a board member of the International Criminal Court’s technology advisory group.<br />While most still undergo a human review before being removed, a YouTube spokeswoman said the<br />technology might automatically remove videos and issue warnings to the content’s creators.<br />“Out of nowhere we received emails in quick succession<br />that said that individual archived videos had been deemed to breach terms and conditions,” Mr. Woods of Airwars said.
