Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 is human-made or manufactured “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts”.
There is rising pressure worldwide to investigate the origins of the 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.