One Year After Trump’s Wuhan Lab Assertion, Facebook No Longer Banning Posts Claiming COVID-19 Was Man-Made
Facebook said it would no longer ban social media posts asserting COVID-19 was man-made.
This is a reversal from the platform’s position on the matter in February, when Facebook said it would ban posts claiming the virus was man-made because “leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization” disproved that theory.
Facebook’s policy change comes after new U.S. intel was released that reported scientists at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology exhibited symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and required hospitalization, per the US State Department.
The reversal also comes after President Joe Biden ordered his national security adviser on Monday to investigate the origins of the virus. Biden included the possibility that the pandemic arose from a laboratory accident.
During the pandemic, Facebook and other social media networks enacted policies to battle medical “misinformation.” On Monday, Project Veritas released leaked internal documents from Facebook to censor posts expressing concerns of any of the currently available COVID vaccines that are not FDA approved.
Facebook referred to the policy as combatting “vaccine hesitancy.”
Last April, then-President Donald Trump argued that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan Laboratory. When asked if he saw evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” in his assertion, he said “Yes, I have.” Trump did not disclose specific intelligence.
After Trump’s claim was made, news websites broadly argued against the lab theory. In an April 30th Washington Post article titled “Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release,” the Post cited “private intelligence briefings” from an “intelligence official” who said that the virus is “’naturally occurring.’”
Under the new Biden Administration and over a year later, a new Washington Post Article was released Tuesday titled “Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible” that details how after Biden took office in January, the theory became “credible” in the mainstream.
The Biden Administration is currently investigating the origins of COVID-19, including whether it originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Biden wants a report on the matter by late August.
