To be fair, the bans usually were about china fabricating the virus on purpose and releasing it with intention, accompanied by racism against Asians. This is pretty different from the accidental leak of a research-object, which is now the accepted theory.
The media did themselves and the public a disservice by gluing the two theories together and blending them. Several friends - college educated, intelligent professionals - were confused enough to approach and ask me about the lab leak/release theories.
The intentional lab release theory is the stuff of nonsense conspiracy theories. The accidental leak theory has always had some support but is now more widely accepted (but will likely never have hard proof).
For a time, both were bannable offenses on Facebook, Youtube and others. Likely because the media glued them together and assigned them both as "disinformation".
It wasn't really the media doing that. It was more a combination between nut heads, meme heads with their umbrella-connection and the first panic. The media just amplified it and rode the wave, as usual. And after the message was out, it was hard to turn it around. And I guess the platforms were just unable to distinguish between them, as also had more interest to wait till the nutty wave died down.
Not sure what you mean. These articles are all from 6+ months after the first panic. At that point, the theories were already long merged and spreading wild. They were already present from the first days in January 2020, when China's situation became epidemic. And this didn't really change till spring 2021 when everyone cooled down a bit and sanity returned a bit.
> To be fair, the bans usually were about china fabricating the virus on purpose and releasing it with intention, accompanied by racism against Asians. This is pretty different from the accidental leak of a research-object, which is now the accepted theory.
No, both versions were lumped into the same bucket.
