Facebook U-turns on removing posts claiming COVID is manmade

Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that COVID-19 is manmade or manufactured ‘in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts’.

Facebook says it will no longer remove claims from its apps that COVID-19 is manmade or manufactured “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts”. The move comes amid increasing pressure worldwide to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, including the possibility that it came from a lab. Since the pandemic began, Facebook has been changing what it allows on the topic and what it bans. In February, it announced a host of new claims it would be prohibiting – including that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese lab. Other claims it added at the time included the false notion that vaccines are not effective or that they are toxic. Lisa Fazio, an assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, said the reversal shows the difficulty of fact-checking in general, particularly with something unprecedented like the coronavirus, when experts can disagree and change their minds with new evidence.