The Ugly Colours of Facebook By James Reed
What a horrible bunch these Big Techers are! I would like to see some super-powered extra-extra-terrestrials, as in the Predator movies, put them on a distant jungle planet, armed only with rocks and sticks, and see how long they survive without their grey Ironman armour! I imagine it would not make much of a cosmic movie, or a very long one!
The sheeple should not have been mindless and allowed Facebook to get so large as to be monopolistically tyrannical, able to influence elections. It is just one more example of the good people not merely doing nothing, but digging the grave of freedom. And, suppressing the debate on Covid, needs to be investigated by the authorities re prosecution.
“Facebook was today accused of 'showing its true and ugly colours' and smothering free speech 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 MP and Liberal Democrat leader, has also been branded 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network.
Critics branded Facebook's behaviour '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 theory that coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab was originally dismissed by left-leaning media outlets last year as a conspiracy theory after it was mentioned by Donald Trump, but they have now changed course with the launch of the US investigation.
British Conservative MP 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 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 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.
What other Covid-19 claims that have been open to debate amongst scientists have been banned by Facebook?
'Wearing a face mask does not help prevent the spread of Covid-19'
The consensus is that masks are better than nothing because they offer some, but not complete, protection against people inhaling the virus and probably stop a lot of the virus if the wearer is the infected person.
Studies done in 2020 and 2021 have found conflicting things, with some pointing out that they effectively stop thousands of potentially infectious droplets being breathed out and that proper medical masks could avoid 99 per cent of transmission.
Another in Denmark found that mask wearers were equally likely to catch the virus as people without masks, and New Mexico State University found droplets could still get through the cloth.
'Social distancing does not help prevent the spread of Covid-19'
The fundamental principle of social distancing – staying away from other people – is clearly a good way to stop the virus spreading. But scientists and authorities have disagreed on suitable distances.
In the UK the rule is 2 metres (6'6') or 'one metre plus' if someone is wearing a mask or is outdoors or behind a screen. Experts said almost no virus particles could make it through 2m of moving air to infect someone.
But the World Health Organization is less strict and its official guidance on social distancing is to keep people 1m (3'3') apart. Some countries have followed this while others have been more cautious, like Britain.
A study by MIT in Boston found that social distancing indoors could give people a false sense of security and that it wasn't enough on its own to stop the spread of Covid, which is airborne.
'Covid-19 vaccines kill or seriously harm people'
Nobody died or became seriously ill because of a vaccine in the clinical trials of the main jabs being used in Europe, the US and Australia, which proved for scientists that they were safe enough to use in the general population.
But since they have been rolled out to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, a tiny proportion of people receiving virus-based vaccines such as the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson ones have developed blood clots. An even smaller number of those people died – believed to be as a result of the clots.
The risk of this happening is, for the majority of adults – and all adults in countries with big outbreaks – significantly smaller than the risk of dying of Covid.
Vaccine safety is being constantly monitored and reported in detail by scientists and medical regulators around the world.
But the clotting has worried some governments enough to ban certain age groups from using the AZ vaccine, or have chosen not to use it at all.
'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
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.”
I suppose 90 days is more than enough time for Biden’s bosses in China to draft the report, and for someone in his office to type it up!
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