Ontario to ban use of cellphones in school classrooms starting in September
Ontario is introducing a suite of measures that will crack down on cellphone use and vaping in schools.
Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.
Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.
Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.
The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.
“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”
Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.
But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the U.S. presidential election and other races get underway.
“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”
Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.
“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.
News makes up less than 3 per cent of what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by over 80 per cent last year.
However, according to a 2023 Pew Research study, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform outpaces the rest: Facebook.
Three in 10 U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16 per cent of U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, also owned by Meta.
Instagram users recently expressed dissatisfaction with the app's choice to stop “proactively” recommending political content posted on accounts that users don’t follow. While the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware Meta made the change.
Ontario is introducing a suite of measures that will crack down on cellphone use and vaping in schools.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued a recall for a specific chocolate brand sold in Ontario and Quebec.
Ontario is now home to an invasive and toxic worm species that can grow up to three feet long and can be dangerous to small animals and pets.
Zendaya and castmates Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor have been on a globetrotting press tour to get the word out about Italian director Luca Guadagnino's original film, which opened in 3,477 locations in the U.S. and Canada.
Quebec will invest $603 million over five years to counter the decline of French in the province, French Language Minister Jean-Francois Roberge announced Sunday.
A senior Qatari official has urged Israel and Hamas to show "more commitment and more seriousness" in ceasefire negotiations in interviews with Israeli media, as pressure builds to reach a deal that would free some Israeli hostages and bring a ceasefire in the nearly seven-month-long war in Gaza.
A recent report sheds light on Canadians living abroad--estimated at around four million people in 2016—and the public policies that impact them.
One person has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of a man who fell from a balcony following an altercation inside a Toronto apartment building.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”