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Parent creates safer social media; global measles outbreaks making travel risky: CBC’s Marketplace Cheat Sheet


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Join Marketplace live in studio for our season finale

What's Wrong with Your Rights
(David Abrahams/CBC)

CBC’s flagship consumer investigative program Marketplace invites you to a live taping of our season finale — “What’s Wrong with Your Rights?” — with CBC hosts Asha Tomlinson and Chris Glover.

It’s part game show and part consumer showdown built around some key questions. Do you know your consumer rights and responsibilities? Can you protect your privacy, recognize misleading sales tactics or spot the use of artificial intelligence?

You won’t just be watching, you could be part of the program.

Contestants will be randomly selected to take part in a series of fast-paced, on-stage challenges that reflect real-world consumer situations.

Get ready to test your ability to conduct your own investigation, navigate complaint processes and identify digital deception!

You’ll also have a chance to weigh in on how your rights should be strengthened, and how governments can do more to protect you.

Light refreshments will be available before the taping.

Stick around after the show to snap a photo, and meet the Marketplace team in the Glenn Gould Studio lobby.

Click here to register.

She wanted a safer social media platform for her kids — so she made her own

WATCH | An alternative social platform with youth safety in mind:

Mom creates app to make social media better for kids

A Canadian mom who wanted an alternative to existing social media for kids that was safer and healthier but still fun worked alongside her teenage daughter to create Tribela. The app allows people to show their life but doesn’t have a like function or use an addictive algorithm.

Natalie Boll was well-versed in social media due to her career in film and television, yet the Vancouver parent was still shocked at what kids face when her teen daughter experienced cyberbullying after getting her first phone.

“My first reaction was just, ‘Let’s go offline.’ … And I deleted everything for me and my daughter at the time,” recalled the mom of three.

Boll vowed to find a middle ground, however, after she discovered the decision was isolating for herself — losing contacts she’d built over 15 years, she noted — and for her eldest child, who felt unable to connect with friends the way she wanted to.

“I realized it shouldn’t be between these platforms that have harmful content, addictive algorithms, performance metrics, these kinds of overstimulating feeds” and complete withdrawal, she said.

Working with advisers from Oxford University, Boll has launched Tribela, an alternative social media platform that aims to strike a balance between “digital detox and doomscrolling” by prioritizing user safety and well-being.

Social media has been in the hot seat lately. Multiple governments are aiming to follow Australia’s recent ban on social media for those under 16, and a trial against Meta is proceeding in New Mexico, in which the state accuses the parent company of Instagram and Facebook of creating an online space where children are targeted for sexual exploitation and of knowing, but failing, to disclose the harms young people face on its platforms.

Meta is also in ‌a landmark trial in Los Angeles over youth social media addiction.

Read more from the CBC’s Jessica Wong.

Explosive global measles outbreaks pose risk to Canadian travellers, health officials warn

A closeup shows a hand holding a syringe.
Explosive measles outbreaks in Mexico and parts of the southern United States have prompted Health Canada to warn travellers to check their vaccination status first. (Dawn Madura/The Fort Collins Coloradoan/The Associated Press)

The global spread of measles shows no signs of slowing down in 2026, including explosive outbreaks in travel hot spots like the southern U.S. and Mexico, prompting warnings from public health officials for Canadians to check their vaccination status before heading abroad this winter.

Mexico has reported more than 2,700 new cases so far this year, government data shows, with most infections detected among infants and young children. Meanwhile, more than 900 new confirmed cases have been identified across the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Measles case counts are soaring in Florida, fuelled by an outbreak involving roughly 60 cases at a university near Naples on the southwest coast, alongside a fast-growing outbreak in South Carolina that’s the country’s largest since the disease was eliminated more than two decades ago, with hundreds of infections reported to date.

Dozens of new infections have also been reported here in Canada to start the year, including a growing cluster of more than 70 cases and counting in Manitoba, mere months after the country lost its measles elimination status following a massive outbreak throughout 2025.

Speaking to CBC News, acting Chief Public Health Officer for Canada Dr. Natasha Crowcroft — who was previously the senior advisor on measles for the World Health Organization — said that the return of measles in Canada led to “devastating” impacts for many families.

Some children acquired brain infections or became deaf, and more than 30 children ended up needing intensive care during last year’s surge, she said. Two pre-term infants in Canada also died in 2025 after acquiring measles before birth.

With March Break travel around the corner, keeping more cases out of the country remains paramount in preventing additional outbreaks, Crowcroft stressed.

Read more from the CBC’s Lauren Pelley


What else is going on?

Some employers using foreign worker program facing bigger fines for violations

Workers’ group urges Ottawa to grant workers restitution in enforcement system

Canadians can now travel to China visa-free for the rest of 2026

Business leaders and travel groups applaud change but political scientist says Canadians should still exercise caution

Arbitrator settles flight attendant wages at Air Canada, as labour dispute comes to official end

Not the union’s desired outcome, said Air Canada CUPE bargaining committee

Grandson of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups inventor accuses Hershey of recipe changes

Hershey acknowledged some changes to Reese’s product line, to meet demand for innovation

Warner Bros. reopens takeover talks with Paramount, but Netflix deal still favoured

Netflix gave Warner Bros. a 7-day window to work out a possible deal with rival bidder Paramount


Marketplace needs your help!

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Have you complained to the consumer protection office in your province or territory? If so, we want to know how it went. Email us at marketplace@cbc.ca.

Catch up on past episodes of Marketplace on CBC Gem.



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