> Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege?
Indeed, who watches the watchmen? The SPLC was recently embroiled in sexist and racist controversies. No human organization is exempt from corruption. We all have to watch each other while simultaneously be charitable and willing to forgive.
> Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're deleting upsetting and distressing videos from their open platform, and that's a good thing!
Debatable. There's no such thing as a right to be "not distressed" or "not upset". Being a member of any human society means being exposed to stresses of all kinds, and we arguably all have the stressful duty of guarding our human and civil rights.
I am in absolute agreement with you that whether or not such material should be removed is subject to debate. There are good arguments on both sides. I am generally against censorship but I can recognise some merit in protecting children from videos of people being shot, hanged, beheaded, etc.. Not that I particularly want to go down the "think of the children" route.
However, all the debate aside, the simple truth is that governments are ordering that content be removed so until we can have the debates it would probably be a good idea to have some way to allow the content be viewed by some people. Arguments that it's probably already available to law enforcement are all very well but law enforcement has limited resources and it's impossible for them to review all the flagged content so if there are people who are willing to volunteer their time to review it looking for evidence of crimes then we should probably have a way to enable that.
As for their being some bad actors in these organisations - that's pretty much unavoidable, even law enforcement has some bad apples.
It's about compromising and making the best of what we have.
Indeed, who watches the watchmen? The SPLC was recently embroiled in sexist and racist controversies. No human organization is exempt from corruption. We all have to watch each other while simultaneously be charitable and willing to forgive.
> Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're deleting upsetting and distressing videos from their open platform, and that's a good thing!
Debatable. There's no such thing as a right to be "not distressed" or "not upset". Being a member of any human society means being exposed to stresses of all kinds, and we arguably all have the stressful duty of guarding our human and civil rights.