6 ms·

Did Facebook really censor the lab leak idea? Last I checked, Facebook only censored the idea that the virus was manufactured, not that it merely leaked - and t

Did Facebook really censor the lab leak idea? Last I checked, Facebook only censored the idea that the virus was manufactured, not that it merely leaked - and that theory is still fringe.

logifail 5y ago
When Peter Daszak drafted the Lancet letter which was published in February 2020 it pretty much shut down any open discussion of origins. "It's of natural origin, or you're a conspiracy theorist". It took the Lancet 16 months(!) to publish a conflict of interest statement revealing that Daszak was linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance.
- ErrolMusk 5y ago
  Facebook HIRED Peter Daszak as a 'factchecker' and allowed him to REMOVE anything that suggested the virus came from a lab. As somebody who probably incited/funded/created covid19, he was heavily incentivized to hide this crime. Facebook ENABLED this coverup
  - bipson 5y ago
    > As somebody who probably incited/funded/created covid19, he was heavily incentivized to hide this crime. > Facebook ENABLED this coverup. Wat? How is this not considered a conspiracy theory? 5 comments down an article that discusses fact checking... Hm, maybe my sarcasm-meter is off by a notch again. dunno.
    - cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
      It hasn't been considered a conspiracy theory since the CSPAN video from 2016 surfaced showing him talking about paying someone in China to make killer viruses. It's at the following link, at about the 1 hour 17 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksKoMZon6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksKoMZon6Y
  - logifail 5y ago
    > Facebook HIRED Peter Daszak as a 'factchecker' [..] Worse, Daszak was also part of WHO-led international mission[0] to investigate the origins of the pandemic(!!) in early 2021, though he eventually recused himself in June 2021[1] [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00295-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/uk-scientist-centre-pandemic-origins-debate-removed-inquiry/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
  - nradov 5y ago
    Did Facebook ever actually hire Peter Daszak? My understanding is that Facebook censored posts which contradicted his infamous Lancet letter (and that's bad enough) but I haven't seen evidence of Facebook paying him or giving him editorial control. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9655057/Facebook-fact-checkers-cited-Lancet-letter-Wuhan-lab-funder-Peter-Daszak-debunk-lab-leak.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9655057/Facebook-fa...
mensetmanusman 5y ago
https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-stop-labeling-posts-questioning-covid-19s-1846979092 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-stop-labeling-posts-questi... Arguable whether adding a ‘fake news’ label is censorship.
- apatters 5y ago
  This is an important distinction. Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. What it is though is confirmation that Facebook is a publisher which publishes editorial opinions about things. (It's incidental that they claim their opinions are facts, publishers have been doing that since the beginning of time.) The only real question is why the government exempts this particular corporation from following the usual rules that publishers have to follow.
  - AvocadoPanic 5y ago
    Look over here and watch me wave my hand while I say 'platform' over and over.
  - EricE 5y ago
    >Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. It's worse - it's poisoning the well, which can be far more effective than outright censorship.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  It is more of a soft censorship.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
They not only censored in individual instances, it was literally part of a written policy of Facebook (that was even public) that asking if Covid was man-made was an illegal thought and to be censored and it got some press coverage when they finally got rid of it: https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/facebook-covid-man-made-lab-theory/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/facebook-covid-man-made-la...
mandmandam 5y ago
First of all, those warning significantly reduced user interaction. The chilling effect is nothing to write off, when we're talking about hundreds of millions of posts. Second, Facebook has removed, completely memory-holed, twenty million posts relating to Covid "misinformation" without any accountability. I can't find how many of those related to the lab leak theory (a significant fact itself), but I think it's pretty safe to say that many of those 20 million removed posts related to the novel coronavirus lab situated a few miles from the novel coronavirus outbreak. To this day the lab leak theory is seen by many as unscientific or a conspiracy theory, and that's in no small part entirely due to FB and Twitter deciding that they had the right to tag and remove information on a question that was very, very clearly not actually settled by science. [0] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-removes-20m-pieces-of-covid-misinformation-content-1.4650340 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-remo...
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  With main stream organizations stealth editing the past, we almost need new language to describe this or else the argument around ‘that is not censorship!’ instead of the issue at hand. https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994?...
tomp 5y ago
The “lab leak” theory, “gain-of-function” and “manufactured virus” theory were deliberately conflated by mainstream media to suppress the former two.
- nradov 5y ago
  In their defense, most members of the mainstream media are so scientifically ignorant that they probably don't even understand the difference between those theories.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Perhaps they should have somebody on their team who isn't scientifically ignorant explain things to them before they start spewing crap to millions of people?
    - 8note 5y ago
      As long as advertisers will pay to show up between segments, there's no real incentive to. News exists to make money, and a faster but less accurate story is more profitable
  - EricE 5y ago
    lol - you think the mainstream media cares one whit about reporting facts? I guess you are in the 20% that still trust them?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  No, it was preventative to hinder people to jump to false conclusions while there cannot be definite certainty about it. I do condemn this lie and believe people had a right to know that it is a possibility. But the condition for that would be that people are able to restrain themselves to not act on suspicions. This was not fully the case. But even with that they should have come clean with their suspicions and adapt them as further evidence surfaced.

Did Facebook really censor the lab leak idea? Last I checked, Facebook only censored the idea that the virus was manufactured, not that it merely leaked - and that theory is still fringe.

logifail 5y ago

When Peter Daszak drafted the Lancet letter which was published in February 2020 it pretty much shut down any open discussion of origins. "It's of natural origin, or you're a conspiracy theorist". It took the Lancet 16 months(!) to publish a conflict of interest statement revealing that Daszak was linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance.

ErrolMusk 5y ago
Facebook HIRED Peter Daszak as a 'factchecker' and allowed him to REMOVE anything that suggested the virus came from a lab. As somebody who probably incited/funded/created covid19, he was heavily incentivized to hide this crime. Facebook ENABLED this coverup
- bipson 5y ago
  > As somebody who probably incited/funded/created covid19, he was heavily incentivized to hide this crime. > Facebook ENABLED this coverup. Wat? How is this not considered a conspiracy theory? 5 comments down an article that discusses fact checking... Hm, maybe my sarcasm-meter is off by a notch again. dunno.
  - cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
    It hasn't been considered a conspiracy theory since the CSPAN video from 2016 surfaced showing him talking about paying someone in China to make killer viruses. It's at the following link, at about the 1 hour 17 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksKoMZon6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksKoMZon6Y
- logifail 5y ago
  > Facebook HIRED Peter Daszak as a 'factchecker' [..] Worse, Daszak was also part of WHO-led international mission[0] to investigate the origins of the pandemic(!!) in early 2021, though he eventually recused himself in June 2021[1] [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00295-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/uk-scientist-centre-pandemic-origins-debate-removed-inquiry/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
- nradov 5y ago
  Did Facebook ever actually hire Peter Daszak? My understanding is that Facebook censored posts which contradicted his infamous Lancet letter (and that's bad enough) but I haven't seen evidence of Facebook paying him or giving him editorial control. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9655057/Facebook-fact-checkers-cited-Lancet-letter-Wuhan-lab-funder-Peter-Daszak-debunk-lab-leak.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9655057/Facebook-fa...

mensetmanusman 5y ago

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-stop-labeling-posts-questioning-covid-19s-1846979092 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-stop-labeling-posts-questi... Arguable whether adding a ‘fake news’ label is censorship.

apatters 5y ago
This is an important distinction. Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. What it is though is confirmation that Facebook is a publisher which publishes editorial opinions about things. (It's incidental that they claim their opinions are facts, publishers have been doing that since the beginning of time.) The only real question is why the government exempts this particular corporation from following the usual rules that publishers have to follow.
- AvocadoPanic 5y ago
  Look over here and watch me wave my hand while I say 'platform' over and over.
- EricE 5y ago
  >Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. It's worse - it's poisoning the well, which can be far more effective than outright censorship.
_-david-_ 5y ago
It is more of a soft censorship.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

They not only censored in individual instances, it was literally part of a written policy of Facebook (that was even public) that asking if Covid was man-made was an illegal thought and to be censored and it got some press coverage when they finally got rid of it: https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/facebook-covid-man-made-lab-theory/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/facebook-covid-man-made-la...

mandmandam 5y ago

First of all, those warning significantly reduced user interaction. The chilling effect is nothing to write off, when we're talking about hundreds of millions of posts. Second, Facebook has removed, completely memory-holed, twenty million posts relating to Covid "misinformation" without any accountability. I can't find how many of those related to the lab leak theory (a significant fact itself), but I think it's pretty safe to say that many of those 20 million removed posts related to the novel coronavirus lab situated a few miles from the novel coronavirus outbreak. To this day the lab leak theory is seen by many as unscientific or a conspiracy theory, and that's in no small part entirely due to FB and Twitter deciding that they had the right to tag and remove information on a question that was very, very clearly not actually settled by science. [0] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-removes-20m-pieces-of-covid-misinformation-content-1.4650340 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-remo...

mensetmanusman 5y ago
With main stream organizations stealth editing the past, we almost need new language to describe this or else the argument around ‘that is not censorship!’ instead of the issue at hand. https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994?...

tomp 5y ago

The “lab leak” theory, “gain-of-function” and “manufactured virus” theory were deliberately conflated by mainstream media to suppress the former two.

nradov 5y ago
In their defense, most members of the mainstream media are so scientifically ignorant that they probably don't even understand the difference between those theories.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Perhaps they should have somebody on their team who isn't scientifically ignorant explain things to them before they start spewing crap to millions of people?
  - 8note 5y ago
    As long as advertisers will pay to show up between segments, there's no real incentive to. News exists to make money, and a faster but less accurate story is more profitable
- EricE 5y ago
  lol - you think the mainstream media cares one whit about reporting facts? I guess you are in the 20% that still trust them?
raxxorrax 5y ago
No, it was preventative to hinder people to jump to false conclusions while there cannot be definite certainty about it. I do condemn this lie and believe people had a right to know that it is a possibility. But the condition for that would be that people are able to restrain themselves to not act on suspicions. This was not fully the case. But even with that they should have come clean with their suspicions and adapt them as further evidence surfaced.