Bytes: What’s new in tech

Facebook keeps dialing down news

Meta’s breakup with politics is taking shape, said Naomi Nix in The Washington Post.

The company said it would start “reducing the amount of political content appearing in people’s news feeds” shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, though not everyone believed it would stay true to its word. So far, it has: “Comparing March 2020 to March 2024, both the Biden and Trump campaigns saw 60 percent declines in their average engagement per Facebook post,” along with “double-digit declines on Instagram.” The Biden campaign has countered the pullback by “posting more frequently,” while the Trump campaign has posted much less. “The 25 most-cited news organizations in the United States” have also “lost 75 percent of their total user engagement on Facebook” since 2022 thanks to the visibility of their posts being decreased.

Who wants phones in schools? Parents

While many parents say they want cellphones barred from school, they don’t like it when schools try, said Julie Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. “Teachers and administrators say gadget bans are the only way to regain student focus and tamp down misbehavior.” But while concern about smartphones and the youth mental-health crisis is widespread, parents want to “be able to reach their kids at all times.” Parents’ anxiety is understandable. However, teachers say parents are “mostly texting kids things that can wait” until dismissal, such as “practice reminders, pickup changes, and other minutiae.” Even parents who support banning phones in classrooms think “they should be allowed at other times, such as passing periods, lunch, and recess.”

Boxing China out of the global AI race

Microsoft’s investment in an AI firm from the United Arab Emirates is a “high-stakes play in the tech Cold War” with China, said Paul Mozur and David E. Sanger in The New York Times. Microsoft this month said it would put $1.5 billion into an Emirati firm called G42, cutting off G42 from future ties to Beijing. The deal was “largely orchestrated by the Biden administration” and includes terms that calm fears that G42 could work with China. G42 will “cease using Huawei telecom equipment” and must seek “permission before it shares its technologies with other governments.”

U.S. officials cheered the agreement. “When it comes to emerging technology, you cannot be both in China’s camp and our camp,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.