Australia admits cyber defences 'inadequate' as medical hack hits millions

France24 – AFP, 26 October 2022 

Hackers have accessed millions of medical records at Medibank, one of Australia's
largest private insurers SAEED KHAN AFP/File

Sydney (AFP) – Hackers accessed millions of medical records at one of Australia's largest private health insurers, the company said Wednesday, prompting the government to admit the nation's cyber safeguards were "inadequate". 

This was the latest in a series of hacks targeting millions of people that have brought Australian companies' lax approach to cyber security into sharp relief. 

Medibank chief executive David Koczkar said information about each of the company's 3.9 million policy holders -- some 15 percent of Australia's population -- had been compromised. 

"Our investigation has now established that this criminal has accessed all our private health insurance customers' personal data and significant amounts of their health claims data," he said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange. 

"This is a terrible crime. This is a crime designed to cause maximum harm to the most vulnerable members of our community." 

The cyber attack was revealed last week, but it was not known until now how many people were impacted. 

The hackers have previously threatened to leak the data, starting with 1,000 famous Australians, unless Medibank pays a ransom. 

Medibank on Wednesday also confirmed it was not insured against cyber attacks, estimating the hack could cost the company as much as Au$35 million (US$22 million). 

The Medibank hack followed an attack on telecom company Optus last month that exposed the personal information of some nine million Australians -- almost a third of the population. 

The Optus attack was one of the largest data breaches in Australian history. 

'Inadequate'

Australia's Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has previously accused companies of stockpiling sensitive customer data they did not need. 

Firms currently face paltry fines -- Au$2.2 million -- for failing to protect customer data. 

Dreyfus last week said these fines would be ratcheted up to Au$50 million. 

"Unfortunately, significant privacy breaches in recent weeks have shown existing safeguards are inadequate," he said. 

"It's not enough for a penalty for a major data breach to be seen as the cost of doing business." 

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil on Tuesday said the fallout from the Medibank hack was "potentially irreparable". 

"One of the reasons why the government is so worried about this is because of the nature of the data," she told Australia's parliament. 

"When it comes to the personal health information of Australians, the damage here is potentially irreparable." 

O'Neil has previously described hacking as a "dog act" -- an Australian phrase reserved for something especially shameful or despicable.

Apple to make iPhone 14 in India in shift away from China

Yahoo – AFP, September 2022 

Apple will manufacture its new flagship smartphone in India, the US tech giant said Monday, as it seeks to diversify production away from a dependence on China. 

The iPhone supply chain is based mainly in China but the country's zero-Covid policies and tensions with the United States have hurt production, analysts say. 

"We're excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India," Apple said in a brief statement. 

The California-based firm already makes older iPhone models in India via Taiwanese manufacturers such as Foxconn, which has a factory in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. 

The latest announcement comes just weeks after Apple launched new smartphones. The tech behemoth is commencing production of the iPhone 14 in India much earlier than it did for previous models, Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said. 

"Over the last couple of years, it has been increasingly diversifying its supply chain to India," Chaurasia told AFP. 

About 7.5 million iPhones -- around three percent of Apple's global production -- were made in India last year, the analyst added. 

"We expect that the local production of iPhones could reach more than 11 million this year," he said. 

Apple's announcement will be a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" strategy under which he has urged foreign businesses to manufacture goods in the South Asian nation.

Elon Musk breaks Twitter silence with photo with Pope

France24 –AFP, 2 July 2022 

The location and details of the meeting were not specified Handout
ELON MUSK'S TWITTER ACCOUNT/AFP

Rome (AFP) – American billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday broke his silence on the Twitter social media site, which he plans to buy, posting a picture of himself with Pope Francis. 

"Honored to meet @Pontifex yesterday," Musk tweeted next to a photograph of him and four of his children with the Argentinian-born pontiff. 

The location and details of the meeting were not specified by the Tesla and SpaceX boss, while the Vatican did not comment on his private audience with Pope Francis. 

Last week Musk said that his $44-billion move to take over Twitter remained held up by "very significant" questions about the number of fake users on the social network. 

The richest man in the world added then that there were also questions about Twitter's debt and whether shareholders will vote for the deal.

Google agrees to pay for beefed-up Wikipedia service

Yahoo – AFP, June 22, 2022 

Google has agreed to pay for ramped-up Wikipedia services, part of a growing trend for the US tech giant to strike commercial deals with other web companies. 

The Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that oversees the online encyclopedia, said Google was the first paying customer for its commercial venture Wikimedia Enterprise, which it launched last year. 

The Internet Archive, a non-profit that runs a site called the Wayback Machine that saves snapshots of websites and is used to fix Wikipedia links, will be offered the commercial services for free. 

"We're thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners," said Wikimedia's Lane Becker in a statement on Tuesday. 

Wikipedia, one of the world's most visited websites, is free to use, updated by volunteers and relies on donations to keep afloat.

The new commercial venture will not change that arrangement for individual users, the foundation said. 

Google uses material from the site for its "knowledge panel" -- a sidebar that accompanies the main search results. 

The source of the information is not always shown, a practice that had sparked complaints from Wikimedia. 

The foundation said its new product gave customers a "feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects" beyond what is available to the public. 

The product was "designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content", it said in a statement. 

Google has previously given money to Wikipedia through donations and grants but the new deal puts their relationship on a more formal commercial footing. 

"We have long supported the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of our shared goals of expanding knowledge and information access for people everywhere," said Google's Tim Palmer. 

The foundation's statement did not reveal the value of the Google contract. 

Google has long had a troubled relationship with other websites -- it even attempted to create a rival to Wikipedia called Knol, though the venture failed. 

But the company has changed tack in recent years and is increasingly making deals, particularly with media companies. 

French regulators and Google ended a years-long dispute on Tuesday by agreeing a framework for the US firm to pay news outlets for content. 

Google said it had already made deals with hundreds of news outlets across Europe, Agence France-Presse among them.

RIP Internet Explorer: South Korean engineer's browser 'grave' goes viral

Rfi.fr – AFP, 17 June 2022 

South Korea, which has some of the world's fastest average internet speeds,
remained bizarrely wedded to Microsoft's Internet Explorer Kiyoung Jung
Courtesy of Kiyoung Jung/AFP

Seoul (AFP) – A South Korean engineer who built a grave for Internet Explorer -- photos of which quickly went viral -- told AFP Friday that the now-defunct web browser had made his life a misery. 

South Korea, which has some of the world's fastest average internet speeds, remained bizarrely wedded to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was retired by the company earlier this week after 27 years. 

In honour of the browser's "death", a gravestone marked with its signature "e" logo was set up on the rooftop of a cafe in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju by engineer Kiyoung Jung, 38. 

"He was a good tool to use to download other browsers," the gravestone's inscription reads. 

Images of Jung's joke tombstone quickly spread online, with users of social media site Reddit upvoting it tens of thousands of times. 

Once dominant globally, Internet Explorer was widely reviled in recent years due to its slowness and glitches. 

But in South Korea, it was mandatory for online banking and shopping until about 2014, as all such online activities required sites to use ActiveX -- a plugin created by Microsoft. 

It remained the default browser for many Seoul government sites until very recently, local reports said. 

The websites of the Korea Water Resources Corporation and the Korea Expressway Corporation only functioned properly in IE until at least June 10, according to a report by the Maeil Economic Daily. 

'Suffering' for IE

As a software engineer and web developer, Jung told AFP he constantly "suffered" at work because of compatibility issues involving the now-defunct browser. 

"In South Korea, when you are doing web development work, the expectation was always that it should look good in Internet Explorer, rather than Chrome," he said. 

Websites that look good in other browsers, such as Safari or Chrome, can look very wrong in IE, which often forced him to spend many extra hours working to ensure compatibility. 

Jung said that he was "overjoyed" by IE's retirement. 

But he also said he felt genuinely nostalgic and emotional about the browser's demise, as he remembers its heyday -- one of the reasons he was inspired to erect the grave stone. 

He quoted Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki: "People are often relieved that machines don't have souls, but we as human beings actually give our hearts to them," Jung told AFP, explaining his feelings for IE. 

He said he was pleased by the response to his joke grave and that he and his brother -- who owns the cafe -- plan to leave the monument on the rooftop in Gyeongju indefinitely. 

"It's been very exciting to make others laugh," he said.

Apple allows other payment methods in dating apps: ACM

DutchNews, June 13, 2022 

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch consumer and markets association ACM says Apple has now changed its unfair conditions, and will allow different methods of payment in Dutch dating apps, thereby meeting official requirements. 

Apple earlier failed to meet the agency’s requirement that it accept alternative payment systems by the March deadline and has been ordered to pay a € 50 million fine. 

The ACM told Apple last August it had to adjust its conditions for inclusion in the Dutch App Store so that dating app providers can use payment systems other than Apple’s own. 

Apple then came up with alternativeconditions stating that dating app providers must develop a completely new app if they want to be able to use an alternative payment system. This too was inadequate, the ACM said, in February. 

‘We want everyone to be able to reap the benefits of the digital economy,’ ACM chairman Martijn Snoep said on Monday. ‘In the digital economy, powerful companies have a special responsibility to keep the market fair and open. Apple avoided that responsibility, and abused its dominant position vis-à-vis dating-app providers.’ The dispute about the fine is still ongoing.

EU agrees single charger standard, in blow to Apple

Yahoo – AFP, Alex PIGMAN, June 7, 2022

 

European officials on Tuesday agreed the text of a proposed EU law imposing a standard charger for smartphones, tablets and laptops sold in the bloc, in a blow to Apple. 

EU member states and MEPs believe a standard cable for all devices will cut back on electronic waste, but iPhone juggernaut Apple argues a one-size-fits-all charger would slow innovation and create more pollution. 

For most portable devices the requirement for charging via a USB Type-C port will come into effect from late 2024, negotiators said, while laptops will be given more time. 

The USB-C rule will also stretch to digital cameras, headphones, headsets, portable speakers and E-readers, they said. 

Lawmakers agreed on the common charger based on a proposal that was made by the EU executive -- the European Commission -- in September, but came more than a decade after the European Parliament first pushed for it. 

The decision will be formally ratified by European Parliament and among EU member states later this year before entering into effect. 

"We have been able to do it in nine months, that means that we can ... move fast when there is a political will," the EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said. 

"We are able to say to the lobbies, 'sorry, but here it is Europe and we're working for our people'," he said. 

The 27-nation union is home to 450 million people, some of the world's richest consumers, and the imposition of the USB-C as standard could affect the entire global market. 

"This is a rule which will apply to everyone," said MEP Alex Agius Saliba, who led the negotiations for the European Parliament. 

"If Apple ... or anyone wants to market their product, sell their products within our internal market, they have to abide by our rules and their device has to be USB-C," he said. 

The rules will also give shoppers the option to opt out of receiving a new charging cable when purchasing an electronic device. 

'Planning ahead'

And in order to prepare for the future, the law has provisions to set a standard on wireless charging. 

This was "not to end up ... legislating for a technology which is basically dying out, so we are also planning ahead," Saliba said. 

Apple, which already uses USB-C connectors on some of its iPads and laptop computers, has insisted any legislation to force a universal charger for all mobiles in the European Union is unwarranted. 

"The proposal is vastly disproportionate to any perceived problem," the company said in its response to the commission when the law was being drafted. 

Imposing a charger standard, it argued, would stifle innovation and "reduce European consumer choice by removing more affordable older models from the market". 

Consumers currently have to decide between phones served by three main chargers: "Lightning" for Apple handsets, the micro-USB widely used on most other mobile phones and the newer USB-C that is increasingly coming into use. 

That range is already greatly simplified from 2009, when dozens of different types of chargers were bundled with mobile phones, creating piles of electronic garbage when users changed brands.

In making its proposal last year, the EU said the current situation remained wasteful and that European consumers spent approximately 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) annually on standalone chargers they bought separately. 

The European Commission had long defended a voluntary agreement it made with the device industry that was set in place in 2009 and saw a big reduction in cables, but Apple refused to abide by it.

Pink Floyd release first new song since 1994 for Ukraine

Yahoo – AFP, April 7, 2022 

David Gilmour: 'We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile
act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people
murdered by one of the world's major powers' (AFP/JOHN D MCHUGH) (JOHN D MCHUGH)

Pink Floyd have written their first new song in almost 30 years to support Ukrainians, the band announced on Thursday. 

"Hey, Hey, Rise-Up!" will be released on Friday, and be used to raise funds for humanitarian causes linked to the war. 

It samples Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from one of Ukraine's biggest bands BoomBox, singing in Sofiyskaya Square in Kyiv in a clip that went viral. 

Khlyvnyukh abandoned a world tour to return to Ukraine and help defend his country. 

"We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world's major powers," Pink Floyd said on their official Twitter feed. 

In a press release, band leader David Gilmour said he had been moved by Khlyvnyuk's video: "It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music." 

He was able to speak with Khlyvnyuk from his hospital bed in Kyiv, where the singer was recovering after being hit by shrapnel in a mortar attack, the record company said. 

"I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future," Gilmour said. 

The image accompanying the song is of a sunflower, and was inspired by a viral video showing a Ukrainian woman insulting two armed Russian soldiers. 

In it, she tells the soldiers: "Take these seeds and put them in your pockets. That way sunflowers will grow when you all rest here." 

It is the first original music from Pink Floyd since 1994's "The Division Bell". 

Gilmour tweeted his opposition to the war soon after Russia's invasion, saying: "Putin must go". 

The band has also pulled their music from Russian and Belarusian streaming sites in protest at the invasion.

Facebook puts Zeewolde data centre plan on hold after protests

DutchNews, March 30, 2022 

An artist’s impression of the site. Illustration: Gemeente Zeewolde

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to stop work on setting up a massive data centre near the Flevoland town of Zeewolde, much to the delight of locals.

A majority of MPs on Tuesday urged ministers to stop the construction and one hour later, Meta said it was putting the project on hold. 

The dispute over the local council’s green light for the massive data centre took a new twist earlier this month when a political party opposing the project won an absolute majority in the local election. 

‘I never expected things would move so quickly,’ said Tom Zonneveld, leader of Leefbaar Zeewolde, after the Meta announcement. 

Zeewolde council had voted to amend the zoning plan at the end of December, clearing the way for the data centre to be built. 

However, part of the land is owned by national government which which still had to give its approval for the project. 

The data centre, or hyperscale, is controversial for several reasons, not least of which that it is being build on agricultural ground. There is also concern about the massive amount of energy needed to power the centre – the equivalent of a small city of 460,000 people. 

ASML says chip makers face a two year shortage of key machinery

DutchNews, March 21, 2022 

An ASML cleanroom where a euv machine is being assembled. Photo: ASML 

Semiconductor makers face a two-year shortage of critical equipment because Dutch chip machinery maker ASML is unable to meet demand fast enough, the company’s chief executive Peter Wennink has told the Financial Times. 

ASML, based in Veldhoven, is a key player in the global chip industry, producing machines which Intel, Samsung and TSMC all use to make advanced semiconductors. The company also has a monopoly in the field of EUV, or extreme ultra violet, based lithography machines.

‘Next year and the year after there will be shortages,’ Wennink told the paper. ‘We’re going to ship more machines this year than last year and . . . more machines next year than this year. But it will not be enough if we look at the demand curve. We really need to step up our capacity significantly more than 50%. That will take time.’ 

The FT said Wennink’s comments come as the semiconductor industry is speeding up investment in new production to meet a global shortage of chips, and that analysts expect the market to double to $1 tn by 2030.

Google agrees 5-year deal to pay AFP for online content: executives

Yahoo – AFP, Céline LE PRIOUX, Jules BONNARD, 17 November 2021 

Under the agreement with Google, AFP will also offer fact-checking training on
several continents (AFP/Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD)

Google and Agence France-Presse on Wednesday said they had signed a "pioneering" five-year deal under which the world’s biggest internet search company will pay an undisclosed sum for content in Europe. 

The agreement, following 18 months of negotiations, is the first by a news agency under the 2019 European directive on so-called neighbouring rights, at the heart of multiple disputes between web giants and the media over payment for use of online news and other content. 

"This is an agreement that covers the whole of the EU, in all of AFP's languages, including in countries that have not enacted the directive," said AFP CEO Fabrice Fries, describing the deal as "pioneering" and the "culmination of a long struggle". 

AFP produces and distributes multimedia content to its clients in six languages around the world. 

After initially being reluctant to pay French newspapers for the use of their content, Google finally signed a three-year framework agreement with some of the nation’s press in early 2021, but was fined 500 million euros ($566 million) by the competition authority in mid-July for having failed to negotiate "in good faith". 

Google has appealed, and is continuing talks to reach a new agreement. 

'Common ground' 

AFP has fought for news agencies to be fully eligible to benefit from neighbouring rights agreements, Fries said. Wednesday's deal "will contribute to the production of quality information and the development of innovation within the agency", he added. 

Google's Sebastien Missoffe (left) and Fabrice Fries reach what the AFP CEO 
described as a 'pioneering' agreement for the search giant to pay for the
news agency's content (AFP/Thomas COEX)

"This agreement with Agence France-Presse demonstrates our willingness to find common ground with publishers and press agencies in France on the topic of neighbouring rights," said Sebastien Missoffe, Google's general manager in France. The pact "paves the way for even closer collaboration", he added. 

Under the agreement AFP will also offer fact-checking training on several continents, details of which will be announced soon, the companies said in a statement. 

Global tech giants -- mostly American -- have run into a wide range of disputes with Brussels and EU member states, over taxation, abuse of their dominant market power, privacy issues and of making money from journalistic content without sharing the revenue. 

To tackle this the EU directive created the form of copyright called neighbouring rights that would allow outlets to demand compensation for use of their content. 

Facebook announced several agreements in October, including one that provides for two years' remuneration to French news media for the use of their content, as well as for their participation in Facebook News, which Facebook will deploy in France in January 2022. 

In France and Denmark, media groups joined forces to negotiate with tech giants, while in Spain Google announced on November 3 that it would reopen its Google News service in early 2022. 

In Australia, a law has been passed to oblige tech giants to pay the media for using their content.

Global tax deal backed by 130 nations

Yahoo – AFP, Jürgen HECKER, July 1, 2021 

US digital giants are the main targets of the new tax

A total of 130 countries have agreed a global tax reform ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share wherever they operate, the OECD said on Thursday, but some EU states refused to sign up. 

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a statement that global companies, including US behemoths Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple would be taxed at a rate of at least 15 percent once the deal is implemented. 

The new tax regime will add some $150 billion to government coffers globally once it comes into force, which the OECD said it hoped would be in 2023. 

"The framework updates key elements of the century-old international tax system, which is no longer fit for purpose in a globalised and digitalised 21st century economy," the OECD said. 

The formal agreement follows an endorsement by the G7 group of wealthy nations last month, and negotiations now move to a meeting of the G20 group of developed and emerging economies on July 9-10 in Venice, Italy. 

US President Joe Biden said the latest deal "puts us in striking distance of full global agreement to halt the race to the bottom for corporate taxes." 

Germany, another backer of the tax reform, hailed it as a "colossal step towards tax justice", and France said it was "the most important tax agreement in a century". 

British finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose country holds the G7 presidency, said "the fact that 130 countries across the world, including all of the G20, are now on board, marks a further step in our mission to reform global tax". 

'In everyone's interest'

But EU low-tax countries Ireland and Hungary declined to sign up to the agreement reached in the OECD framework, the organisation said, highlighting lingering divisions on global taxation. 

Both countries are part of a group of EU nations also including Luxembourg and Poland that have relied on low tax rates to attract multinationals and build their economies. 

Ireland, the EU home to tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple, has a corporate tax rate of just 12.5 percent. 

Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has warned that the new rules could see Ireland lose 20 percent of its corporate revenue. 

On Thursday, Donohoe said Ireland still "broadly supports" the deal, but not the 15-percent tax floor. 

The tax plan got a much-needed boost from Joe Bidens's administration

"There is much to finalise before a comprehensive agreement is reached", he said, adding that Ireland would "constructively engage" in further discussions. 

Also expressing concerns is Switzerland -- known for its banking secrecy laws -- which said it would support the measures despite "major reservations" and that it hoped the interests of "small, innovative countries" be taken into account. 

An agreement for the implementation of the plan is planned for October. 

Nine of the 139 participants in the talks have so far not signed on to the agreement. 

But China, whose position was being closely watched as it offers tax incentives to key sectors, endorsed the agreement. 

"It is in everyone's interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members as scheduled later this year," said OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann. 

"This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it," Cormann said, adding that "it also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions". 

'More equitable' global economy 

Finance chiefs have characterised a minimum tax as necessary to stem competition between countries over who can offer multinationals the lowest rate. 

For Biden, a global tax agreement will help maintain US competitiveness since he has proposed hiking domestic corporate taxes to pay for an infrastructure and jobs programme with a price tag of around $2 trillion. 

Biden -- whose tax plans face a potentially uphill battle in Congress -- hailed an "important step in moving the global economy forward to be more equitable for workers and middle class families in the United States and around the world." 

He noted that those nations who signed up make up more than 90 percent of the world's economy. 

The OECD's statement said the package "will provide much-needed support to governments needing to raise necessary revenues" to fix their budgets and invest in measures to back the post-Covid recovery. 

Oxfam, a charity, meanwhile said that the deal fell short of a tax level needed to give poorer countries a sufficient share of additional tax revenue. 

Calling the deal "skewed-to-the-rich and completely unfair", Oxfam said that signatories had missed a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a profoundly more equal world".

Facebook reverses course, won't ban lab virus theory

Yahoo – AFP, Rob Lever, May 27, 2021 

Facebook has reversed its policy banning posts suggesting Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory amid renewed debate over the origins of the virus, raising fresh questions about social media's role in policing misinformation. 

The latest move by Facebook, announced late Wednesday on its website, highlights the challenge for the world's largest social network of rooting out false and potentially harmful content while remaining open for discourse. 

"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 statement said. 

"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 new statement updates guidance from Facebook in February when it said it would remove false or debunked claims about the novel coronavirus which created a global pandemic killing more than three million. 

The move followed President Joe Biden's directive to US intelligence agencies to investigate competing theories on how the virus first emerged -- through animal contact at a market in Wuhan, China, or through accidental release from a research laboratory in the same city. 

Biden's order signals an escalation in mounting controversy over the origins of the virus. 

The natural origin hypothesis holds that it emerged in bats then passed to humans, likely via an intermediary species. 

This theory was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2. 

The lab-leak theory, meanwhile, is gaining increasing traction in the United States, where it was initially fueled by former president Donald Trump and his aides and dismissed by many as a political talking point. 

A recent Wall Street Journal report, citing US intelligence findings, said three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in November 2019, a month before Beijing disclosed the existence of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak. 

Pushback from the right 

Facebook's move, which could impact what some three billion users of its family of apps see, highlights the controversy over social media's aggressive efforts to root out misinformation on topics where facts may be evolving. 

The reversal may be "another exhibit for the possibility that there will be a swing back against the more heavy-handed moderation," tweeted Evelyn Douek, a Harvard University lecturer and researcher of online speech regulation. 

"When the pandemic started, there were many arguments that 'what platforms are doing for health misinfo, they should do for all misinfo all the time.' It was over-simplified then, and strikes me as untenable now." 

Facebook uses independent third-party fact checkers, including AFP, to debunk misinformation. Although the origins of the virus remain unproven, the lab leak theory has been subject to fact-checking. 

One fact checking organization, PolitiFact, reported last September that public health authorities had "repeatedly said the coronavirus was not derived from a lab" but earlier this month revised its guidance, noting: "that assertion is now more widely disputed," and saying it would continue to review the matter. 

The abrupt Facebook reversal prompted angry responses from conservatives and Trump supporters. 

"Wow! But they did suppress the story for a year, defaming Trump and Republicans for a 'conspiracy theory' blacklisting conservative press and banning us," tweeted Kelly Sadler, a blogger and former Trump aide. 

But Rebekah Tromble, director of Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University, said Facebook "is doing the right thing" by updating its guidance. 

"Information changes over time, and responsible organizations -- social media outlets and fact-checkers alike -- make decisions based on the best information available but remain open and willing to change their evaluations as new information arises," Tromble told AFP. 

"Facebook will undoubtedly receive blowback for this decision, as will fact-checkers. But that blowback will come from the same people and groups that have always been critical." 

Facebook in a separate statement said it was stepping up its efforts to curb misinformation by limiting the reach of users who "repeatedly" share false content. 

Until now, Facebook had only taken this action on individual posts, but now will clamp down on the users who are the largest spreaders of false content.

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