FactCheck: Does Facebook change its policies based on Zuckerberg’s opinion and did he say COVID Vaccines change people’s DNA? No and we can’t say for sure

The internet is fall of hoaxes and fake news, so one of the latest claims are that Facebook deletes opinions that go against Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion and that he claims the COVID-19 vaccine changes people’s

DNA. Does Facebook do this and did he say it? The answers are no to the first one and we can’t say for sure to the second one. There is more to the story.

Does Facebook change its policies based on Zuckerberg’s opinion? No, it doesn’t. it is wrong to say that Facebook deletes opposing views to Zuckerberg. Instead, it removes proven baseless lies and misinformation. Until 2018, misinformation was circulating uncontrollably on the platform, until it became clear that there were dangers from allowing them to stay on the platform. In December 2020, Facebook started erasing incorrect information.

It is especially important at this time that Facebook delete me misinformation because we live in a pandemic with a virus that kills. These vaccines are safe and are currently the best solution for returning to normal.

Did Zuckerberg say COVID Vaccines change people’s DNA? We can’t say for sure- but there is more to the story.

A recent video shows Mark Zuckerberg saying that vaccines need to be studied more from a safety point of view, as “we do not know the long-term side effects when they change our body’s DNA”. The presenter of the video then says that Zuckerberg in his own words violates the terms and conditions of his own platform.

The video also shows a later interview between Zuckerberg and Anthony Fauci, with both agreeing that coronavirus vaccines do not affect DNA.

The purpose of this video is to promote the idea that Facebook changes policies and rules depending on the current opinion of its CEO.

First of all, let’s say that Zuckerberg’s first video was leaked from an internal question/answer session last July. However, we do not know the general context of what he said, nor the question that preceded it, as in the video he simply appears to say the above.

It is important to note that what he said was in a private conversation, off platform, out of context, without the intention of publishing, obviously without being aware, in response to a question unknown to us.

The video has been cut so that there is no clear context, so we can not know if what Mr. Zuckerberg said was in the context of coronavirus vaccines (eg maybe he was talking about another medical method, genome processing, etc.). We are not even able to judge if the video is real or if it is a deep fake. If this were true and he was talking about coronavirus vaccines in July, he might not even be aware of what mRNA is.

It is important to note that no matter what an individual claims, even a powerful person like Mr. Zuckerberg, mRNA vaccines do NOT even have the ability to come in contact with DNA. The mRNA is also relatively fragile and lasts inside a cell for about 72 hours before dissolving.

The second interview is taken from last November, and shows Mr. Zuckerberg trying to confirm with Dr. Fauci that DNA is not affected. In fact, Fauci denies it in the affirmative.

So why is Facebook erasing the opposite view?

It is obvious that Mr. Zuckerberg is not an expert in medicine and biology. Assuming he was indeed talking about mRNA vaccines, somewhere between July and November he was logically informed further about the function of these vaccines.

It is not shameful to admit that one was wrong, in the light of data previously unknown to him. After all, this is how science works and many of us should leave our old beliefs when we are presented with data that demolishes them. Zuckerberg did the right thing when he confirmed that vaccines do not change DNA, with a Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the USA, Dr. Anthony Fauci, representing the scientific consensus.

But why not listen to an expert who takes the opposite view? For the reason that a non-expert can very easily be seduced and misinterpret ambiguities and unfoundedness that one can throw at him. When there is consensus, it means the subject has been studied in depth.