Facebook announced on May 26 that posts pushing the hypothesis that COVID-19 is man-made will no longer be banned on the platform.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
“We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge,” the spokesperson added.
The social media company in February stated in a blog post that it would take down posts that contained what it called false information about COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, including that COVID-19 is man-made, and that vaccines could be dangerous.
Facebook said at the time that it would remove accounts, pages, and groups that share the claims repeatedly.
The change in policy comes after infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that he’s now “not convinced” that COVID-19 developed naturally, and called for a deeper investigation into its origins.
Early reports about an outbreak of the CCP virus first appeared in China’s central city of Wuhan in late 2019, when a cluster of cases was reported by state-controlled media to be linked to a local wet market. More than a year later, the origins of the virus remain unknown, although the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is now receiving wider recognition.
Since Fauci’s admission, President Joe Biden has ordered the U.S. intelligence community (IC) to ramp up efforts to probe the origins of the virus.
“After I became president, in March, I had my national security adviser task the Intelligence Community to prepare a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” Biden said, adding that he wanted the IC to “redouble” their efforts in investigating the origins of the virus.
