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Facebook Headquarter by Minette Lontsie, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Why the Verdict on Social Media Defective Design Harming Children Gets the Instinct Right But the Law Wrong

A California jury’s decision last week to hold Meta and YouTube liable for harms to a young woman’s mental health has been greeted as a watershed moment. Child safety advocates have called it Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco moment.” Parents who lost children to what they attribute to social media addiction embraced outside the courthouse. Commentators who have long argued that social media companies bear responsibility for the damage their services inflict on young users see the verdict as vindication.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that the instinct behind the decision is understandable. The evidence at trial was damning, as internal Meta documents showed the company knew Instagram was harming adolescents but continued targeting them anyway. But the legal theory the jury endorsed – that social media platforms are defectively designed products – is the wrong tool for a real problem, and building on it risks undermining the very accountability the strategy seeks to deliver.

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April 2, 2026 — 0 comments — Columns
the value of privacy by Marina Noordegraaf https://flic.kr/p/qSv3vV CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Scoping in the Tech Giants: Bill C-22’s International Production Order and the Shift to a Less Privacy-Protective Cross-Border Disclosure System

While much of the focus on lawful access and subscriber information has centred on the reduced standards for obtaining an order for such information from Canadian telecom and Internet providers, there is another new production order deserving of attention (see earlier posts on domestic subscriber information standards and mandatory metadata retention). Bill C-22 introduces a new mechanism for Canadian courts to authorize police to request subscriber information and transmission data held outside the country directly from foreign platforms such as Google, Meta, and other services that provide communications services to the public. The provision is presented as a tool to modernize cross-border investigations, but in practice, it is likely to reduce privacy safeguards.

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March 31, 2026 — 2 comments — News
Big Brother is Watching by Andrea Yori CC BY 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/8yW5qa

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 263: The Lawful Access Act Roundtable With David Fraser and Robert Diab

Lawful access is back. The decades-long battle has entered a new phase with the introduction of Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. This bill follows last spring’s attempt to bury lawful access provisions in Bill C-2, a border measures bill. The latest bill covers the two main aspects of lawful access: law enforcement access to personal information held by communication service providers such as ISPs and wireless providers, and the development of surveillance and monitoring capabilities within Canadian networks.

To discuss the latest iteration of lawful access, I’m joined on the Law Bytes podcast by David Fraser and Robert Diab for a roundtable discussion of the key elements of the proposed legislation. David is one of Canada’s leading privacy lawyers and a partner with McInness Cooper in Halifax, and Robert is a law professor at Thompson Rivers University in BC and the co-author of a book on search and seizure law.

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March 30, 2026 — 1 comment — Podcasts
2024.05.02 Pro-Jewish at GWU, Washington, DC USA 123 119145 by Ted Eytan CC BY-SA 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/2pNGZYy

When Writing About Antisemitism Proves the Point: What the Replies Reveal

Over the past several weeks, I have written and spoken about the escalation of antisemitic violence in Canada including a Globe and Mail op-ed, a blog post after Toronto Police finally moved to restrict protests from Jewish residential streets, an interview on CBC’s The Current, and a PROC committee appearance where antisemitism was raised. In each case, I shared the piece or clip on social media (here, here, here), sparking a torrent of antisemitic vitriol that even after months of escalation leaves me stunned. I write this post not to amplify the vocal hate that fills my timeline, but to ensure that readers who might otherwise not scroll past my original posts understand what has become normalized.

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March 26, 2026 — 6 comments — News
Face Jewish Hate by Office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Face_Jewish_Hate.jpg

Acting on Antisemitism: If This Was Always Possible, Why Didn’t It Happen Sooner?

Earlier this month, I appeared on CBC’s The Current to discuss the escalation of antisemitic violence in Canada following my Globe op-ed and PROC committee appearance. The host asked me whether something like the Bondi Beach massacre, the December 2025 attack that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, could happen here. I replied that it was a certainty. He was taken aback and pressed me on it. I clarified that I didn’t mean a massacre was certain, but that with the relentless escalation of antisemitic violence in Canada, people would die. It was not a matter of if, but when.

That exchange has stayed with me, not because I said something provocative, but because his surprise was so revealing. What felt to me (and I believe many in the Jewish community) like an obvious, even understated observation given the inevitable endpoint of a trajectory visible to anyone who has been paying attention, registered to him as an alarming claim requiring justification. That gap between what the Jewish community experiences and what everyone else appears willing to acknowledge has been a defining feature of the post-October 7th world.

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March 25, 2026 — 5 comments — News
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