| As the pandemic ramped up in 2020, major social networks rolled out a series of policy changes to curb misleading claims about the virus, including theories about its roots. Twitter said early on in May 2020 that it would at least label disputed tweets about the virus, including on its origins. For months after the pandemic began, the theory that the virus originated in a lab was reported as unlikely by medical experts and intelligence officials, some of whom called it a conspiracy theory and blasted claims China created it as a bioweapon. Facebook made a more explicit policy change in February 2021, announcing that it would remove "debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines" including that "COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured." Like other platforms, Facebook said it made the decision after "consultations with leading health organizations," like the World Health Organization. But the company reversed the policy after new reporting at the time reinvigorated the debate around the so-called Wuhan lab-leak theory, as I first reported in May 2021. "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 from our apps," a Facebook spokesperson told me at the time. A YouTube spokesperson said then that such claims were not in violation of its policies because "there has not been consensus" on the virus's origins. After Elon Musk's takeover, Twitter said in November that it is "no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy." In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Musk appeared to express support for the theory that the coronavirus pandemic originated from a lab. Last year, the company disclosed it had suspended over 11,000 accounts and removed nearly 100,000 pieces of content globally while the policy was in effect between January 2020 and September 2022. It's not clear how many of those actions may have been tied to covid-19 origin claims. The new findings are also fueling fresh GOP allegations that tech companies "colluded" with the federal government to stifle viewpoints about the coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who as Missouri's attorney general sued to get communications between Biden administration officials and social media companies around medical misinformation, said Sunday he plans to "to make sure this censorship never happens again." | 
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