From Reason.com
Facebook made a quiet but dramatic reversal last week: It no longer forbids users from touting the theory that COVID-19 came from a laboratory.
One of the most “entertaining” (and I use that term loosely) developments in the last few weeks has been the revival of the Lab Theory origin.
Early in COVID, the theory that the virus had been accidently (and in certain circles purposefully) released from a viral lab, the most prominent being Wuhan, was espoused. Immediately after its very reasonable theorization, the media went on an aggressive campaign to discredit that theory with everything under the sun… except convincing evidence that the Wuhan viral lab that had received US funding (or another lab similar lab) could not have done it for X, Y, and Z reasons.
Instead it was simply racist to imply that the viral lab that was working with Coronavirus, until…
“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 or manufactured from our apps,” the social media platform declared in a statement.
In a stunning turn of events [/sarc]. The always plausible theory that the virus may have unintentionally escape the lab where it was being studied, regardless of it was being made more virulent for any reason under the sun and regardless of if it was Wuhan or not, has circled back. Media, both “professionally” journalistic and social, have done a 180 back to the spot where.
‘Well yes, it could have come Wuhan lab and China is being very cagey about anything they know so…’
But Facebook’s concession that the lab leak story it once viewed as demonstrably false is actually possibly true should put to rest the idea that banning or regulating misinformation should be a chief public policy goal.
Read the whole thing on Reason see for yourself the problematic situation of Social Media being an arbiter of truth instead of an arbiter of communication alone. There shouldn’t be a truth police against ‘false news’ that we rely on more than the standard burdens of logical proof.