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Facebook flip-flops on origins of COVID-19
Facebook says it will no longer ban posts that claim COVID-19 was man-made as the Biden Administration called on intelligence agencies to take a closer look at the cause of the outbreak.
Health officials characterized the Covid-19 virus as a pandemic more than a year ago, and yet questions still linger about how and where the deadly outbreak began.
The origins of COVID-19 are now facing new scrutiny as President Biden this week ordered the intelligence community to determine whether coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan.
Until now, the Biden administration believed the virus occurred naturally in China, claiming it was unlikely it originated inside a lab.
"They're having that direct conversation when it comes to the origins of COVID-19. And we have been pretty clear, you know, China has not been transparent," deputy White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
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Doctor Anthony Fauci agreed that the U.S. must have transparency from China.
"So because we don't know 100 percent what the origin is, it's imperative that we look and we do an investigation and that's how we feel right now," Fauci said.
Social media giant Facebook went as far as removing posts about the origins of COVID-19 that claimed the virus came from the Wuhan lab, but now Facebook is also changing course.
"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.
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"They have been under increased pressure from politicians and from others with respect to some of the decisions they are making on their platform what content they are permitting to stay up and what content they are banning," said social media and privacy attorney Pedram Tabibi.
Tabibi said the investigation into the real origin of COVID-19 is more evidence Facebook's billions of users need to be vigilant when it comes to verifying facts.
"This should drive home one additional point that don't believe everything you read online take steps to become informed and do research," Tabibi said.
China continues to block any new investigations on its soil, suggesting instead that the U.S. is to blame for the outbreak.