'This is why Big Tech must never be the arbiter of truth': Republicans slam 'arrogant' Facebook for thinking it can 'decide where COVID comes from' - as it FINALLY scraps ban on 'man-made virus' posts
Republicans in Congress pounced on Facebook after the tech giant suddenly reversed its its policy of removing posts calling the COVID-19 'man-made' now that President Joe Biden has ordered the intelligence community to review the origins of the coronavirus.
'The arrogance of @Facebook to decide where and how precisely covid originated, and who should be able to talk about it, is stunning. But sadly typical,' fumed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Twitter.
'The more we learn, the clearer it is that Communist China played a role in killing millions of people,' said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).
'This is why Big Tech must never be the arbiter of truth,' she said in a statement to DailyMail.com.
The blasts come as the 'lab leak' proposition has gone from a notion derided as a conspiracy theory to something viable enough that senior government officials are demanding be at least examined.
Ted Cruz tweeted: 'This is why the Big Tech overlords shouldn't be involved in fact checking'.
Facebook has lifted its ban on user comments about COVID-19 being man-made after Joe Biden (left) ordered intelligence agencies to probe whether coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab, less than four months after saying it was a conspiracy theory. Republicans are blasting the company for its turnaround
Also slamming the company was Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). 'This was another sorry attempt by Facebook to shut down discussions that didn’t fit its political narrative. Social media platforms should encourage open debate instead of blocking content that offends their political views,' he said.
The tech giant was already facing political pressure in Congress over its efforts to impose guardrails on false election claims at election time and its privacy practices, as well as its role as a conduit for potential election interference and its overall market power.
'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 company said in a statement Wednesday.
That was a stark turnaround from February, when it came out with a statement on its policy for 'removing more false claims about Covid-19 and vaccines.'
'This is why Big Tech must never be the arbiter of truth,' said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)
Donald Trump Jr. said the Wuhan lab leak theory 'always made the most sense,' although many scientists have pointed to prior viruses that jumped from animals to humans. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is located near where the virus first emerged
'Following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines,' it said then.
Since that time, many top scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have said the potential of a lab leak should at least be investigated.
Fauci said at a hearing this week if he still believed the virus was a 'natural occurrence.'
'I still believe that the most likely scenario was that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100 per cent for sure,' Fauci responded.
'And since there's a lot of concern, a lot of speculation, and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there's open transparency and all the information that's available to be made available to scrutinize.'
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) deemed the Biden administration's intel investigation 'too little, too late.'
'Twitter users have never been stopped from sharing stories about the lab theory. Last September, Chinese virologist Dr. Li Meng Yan was suspended. She claimed it was because she'd promoted the theory. Twitter reactivated her account a month later. While neither Twitter nor YouTube have banned people from discussing the theory, they do both have policies on blocking COVID content that they deem to be 'misleading'. Twitter on Thursday told
that it wasn't changing its policies on the subject, but a spokesman refused to confirm which stories Twitter deems to be false. YouTube, a which is owned by Google, has said nothing on the subject.'
Facebook was accused of 'showing its true and ugly colors' and smothering free speech to cosy up to China as it scrapped its ban on posts debating whether Covid-19 could be man-made - but only after Joe Biden ordered the CIA to probe if the virus came from a Wuhan lab.
Mark Zuckerberg's global policy chief Nick Clegg, the former British Member of Parliament and Liberal Democrat leader, has also been branded 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network.
Critics branded Facebook's behavior had been 'contemptible' and begged them to respect free speech rather than 'ingratiating' themselves with states such as China, which has banned the website but remains a $5billion-a-year ad market.
The criticism spanned to Britain as well. British Conservative Member of Parliament Peter Bone told MailOnline: 'It does seem to me that Facebook is not an open platform for people to put their views on. It is an open platform for people to put their views on as long as they agree with Facebook.
'Their decisions are based on politics not on principle... if it is fashionable with the liberal elite it can go down. If it is liberal elite say it it must be OK, if it's President Trump that says it it must be awful.
'The thing that Trump was saying is exactly the same as Biden is saying, but Trump was according to Facebook not allowed to say that. Whereas everyone loves Biden from Facebook therefore it must be right. It is one rule for one political view and another for another.'
And the liberal media in the US, who lampooned Donald Trump when he said a year ago said he had 'a high degree of confidence' that the virus escaped from a lab, have finally conceded that he may have been right - after a year ridiculing the suggestion.
Facebook ruled in February it would 'remove' any posts that claimed that coronavirus was 'man-made' or that the virus was 'created by an individual, government or country' - branding it 'misinformation' and a 'debunked claim' that required 'aggressive action' from moderators.
But today the tech giant reversed its ban on its users discussing the theory, just hours after President Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether it was man-made after all - and report back in 90 days.
In April of last year, Facebook had announced that it was imposing limits on 'harmful misinformation about COVID-19', and in February this year this was extended to the lab theory spoken about widely by Donald Trump
Mark Zuckerberg's global policy chief Nick Clegg, the former British MP and Liberal Democrat leader, has also been branded 'feeble' by critics
'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 company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
'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 tech firm has been accused of bowing to Beijing, liberal media outlets as well as left-wing politicians and commentators, who reacted furiously when then president Donald Trump laid blame for the fast-spreading virus on Beijing, calling it the 'China virus' or 'Kung Flu' and suggesting there was evidence it was borne from a laboratory in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic in early 2020.
President Biden's top epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci has also u-turned about where the virus may have originated this week, saying 'you never know' - but last year he insisted there was 'no evidence' to point to coronavirus having been manufactured when Trump raised it as a possibility.
America is looking at the theory seriously, leading to China hitting out at the 'dark history' of the US intelligence community after President Biden's probe was announced.
But critics also turned on Facebook, accusing them of stifling free speech.
Tory MP Bob Seely told MailOnline that Facebook's behaviour was 'contemptible' and he hoped they would now respect free speech rather than 'ingratiating' themselves with states such as China.
'I think it is absolutely contemptible and it shows their commitment to democracy is an incredibly thin veneer over their commercial interests. So many big tech firms are showing their true and frankly really ugly colours,' he said.
'This is not a conspiracy theory. There is a genuine debate about where the Wuhan virus came from.
'For Facebook to be shutting that conversation down is absolutely appalling.
'Time and again these wretched big tech firms are showing that when it comes to their taxes, when it comes to telling the truth, when it comes to protecting freedom of speech, they are absolutely on the wrong side of the argument.
'I find Nick Clegg's behaviour, given he once professed to have 'liberal values' particularly feeble and contemptible.'
Mr Seely said he hoped the change in position was now honoured 'My very strong recommendation is that they re-embrace freedom of speech and understand their job is not to censor people but to provide a platform where people within the law can express themselves and ideas freely,' he said.
'I suggest they get back to that function rather than trying to ingratiate themselves with China or anyone else.'
Tory former leader Iain Duncan Smith said the 'coincidences were too great' to assume that Covid came out of a market in Wuhan and debate should not be 'stifled'. 'You have a real problem I think the power now of the social media giants is transcending the power of governments,' he said.
'These are decisions about debate. They are not about conspiracy.'
China has reacted furiously to Biden's call for a new investigation into the virus's origins, accusing him of 'politicising' the issue and suggesting that US biolabs should be investigated instead.
Lijian Zhao, foreign ministry spokesman who has been Beijing's point-man in trying to pin blame for the pandemic outside the country's borders, accused the US of trying to shift blame away from its own high Covid case and death counts - and suggested security services may be involved in a cover-up.
Meanwhile Hu Xijin, editor of the state mouthpiece Global Times newspaper, accused Biden of trying to discredit a WHO investigation which concluded that a lab leak is 'unlikely' - though critics have previously blasted that report as a China-centric whitewash.
China's American embassy also hit out, accusing Biden and his security services of being 'fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game' in a statement on its website.
Previously the lab theory was banned by Facebook, with several of the earliest reported cases of covid linked to a wet market in Wuhan, which sold a range of fresh food produce, including fish and animals.
Some suggested it may have come from a bat, because they are host to a more diverse range of coronaviruses than humans or from a pangolin, a scaly anteater from Asia used in Chinese medicine and sold for their meat and skin.
In April of last year, Facebook announced that it was imposing limits on 'harmful misinformation about COVID-19', including about how dangerous the virus is and how many people it was killing.
And in February of this year, the company announced that it was expanding its crackdown to include claims that the virus was man-made, insisting it was a conspiracy theory that had been 'debunked'.
But last year Sir Richard Dearlove, who served as chief of Britain's MI6 spy service from 1999 to 2004, said last year: 'I subscribe to the theory… that it's an engineered escapee from the Wuhan Institute [of Virology].'
Facebook has insisted that its ban was based on advice from experts, including from the World Health Organisation.
A spokesman said: 'Throughout the pandemic, based on guidance from leading global health organizations and local health authorities, we have been removing content with false claims or conspiracy theories that could cause harm. Our policies mirror the public health response and therefore in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove claims that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps'.
The social network's about-face comes on the same day that President Joe Biden asked his intelligence agencies to 'redouble their efforts' to pinpoint the origins of the coronavirus.
Last year, claims by the Trump administration that the coronavirus may have originated in a lab in Wuhan were met with skepticism from mainstream media, which appeared to adopt the view that pathogen was transmitted from bats to humans.
Claims that vaccines are not effective against preventing disease and that it is safer to get the disease than to get a vaccine have also been banned from the platform.
Posts making such claims will be removed from the website, as well as Facebook-owned Instagram, the company said in the post that came with a list of 'misinformation' it was banning from its platforms.
Earlier this week, Project Veritas claimed that it obtained leaked documents from whistleblowers inside the company which prove that the social network is testing an algorithm that would rate users' comments according to a 'vaccine hesitancy score.'
Those comments which discourage others from taking the vaccine would be demoted, according to the documents obtained by investigators.
After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off GOP complaints the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press China on alleged obstruction.
Biden asked US intelligence agencies to report back within 90 days.
On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had 'contradicted' the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab.
There is outrage over the fact that for the last year, the theory has been widely discredited by the media in America when it may explain the entire pandemic
He directed US national laboratories to assist with the investigation and the intelligence community to prepare a list of specific queries for the Chinese government.
He called on China to cooperate with international probes into the origins of the pandemic.
Republicans, including former President Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal in Wuhan, China.
Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had 'coalesced' around those two scenarios but 'do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.'
He revealed that two agencies lean toward the animal link and 'one leans more toward' the lab theory, 'each with low or moderate confidence.'
'The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,' said Biden.
His statement came after weeks of the administration endeavoring to avoid public discussion of the lab leak theory and privately suggesting it was farfetched.
In another sign of shifting attitudes, the Senate approved two Wuhan lab-related amendments without opposition, attaching them to a largely unrelated bill to increase US investments in innovation.
One of the amendments, from Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, would block US funding of Chinese 'gain of function' research on enhancing the severity or transmissibility of a virus.
Paul has been critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, and aggressively questioned him at a recent Senate hearing over the work in China.
The other amendment was from GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and it would prevent any funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Both were approved without roll call votes as part of the broader bill that is still under debate in the Senate.
As for the origin of pandemic, Fauci, a White House coronavirus adviser, said Wednesday that he and most others in the scientific community 'believe that the most likely scenario is that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100 percent for sure.'
'And since there's a lot of concern, a lot of speculation and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there's open transparency and all the information that's available, to be made available, to scrutinize,' Fauci said at a Senate hearing.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House supports a new World Health Organization investigation in China, but she added that an effective probe 'would require China finally stepping up and allowing access needed to determine the origins.'
Biden still held out the possibility that a firm conclusion may never be reached, given the Chinese government's refusal to fully cooperate with international investigations.
'The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,' he said.
Administration officials continue to harbor strong doubts about the lab leak theory.
Rather, they view China's refusal to cooperate in the investigation — particularly on something of such magnitude — as emblematic of other irresponsible actions on the world stage.
Privately, administration officials say the end result, if ever known, won't change anything, but note China's stonewalling is now on display for the world to see.
The State Department, which ended one Trump-era probe into the Chinese lab theory this spring, said it was continuing to cooperate with other government agencies and pressed China to cooperate with the world.
'China's position that their part in this investigation is complete is disappointing and at odds with the rest of the international community that is working collaboratively across the board to bring an end to this pandemic and improve global health security,' said spokesman Ned Price.
Research into the origins of the virus is critically important, said Arinjay Banerjee, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatchewan, Canada, because: 'If you don't know where it came from, how are you going to stop it from spreading it again?'
'The great probability is still that this virus came from a wildlife reservoir,' he said, pointing to the fact that spillover events – when viruses jump from animals to humans – are common in nature, and that scientists already know of two similar beta coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused epidemics when humans were infected, SARS1 and MERS.
'The evidence we so far have suggests that this virus came from wildlife,' he said
However, the case is not completely closed.
'There are probabilities, and there are possibilities,' said Banerjee.
'Because nobody has identified a virus that's 100 per cent identical to SARS-CoV-2 in any animal, there is still room for researchers to ask about other possibilities.'
Andy Slavitt, Biden's senior adviser for the coronavirus, said Tuesday that the world needs to 'get to the bottom ... whatever the answer may be.'
'We need a completely transparent process from China; we need the WHO to assist in that matter,' Slavitt said.
'We don't feel like we have that now.'
Pictured: The Huanan seafood market on February 9, 2021 in Wuhan, China, long believed to have been the site where the pandemic began
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that workers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with an illness that resembled COVID-19 – weeks before the coronavirus would begin ravaging China and the world. Researchers at the lab are seen in this February 2017 file photo
Pictured: The Wuhan lab where some have claimed Covid-19 originated from, which was disputed by WHO researchers on February 9
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