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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 255: Grappling with Grok – Heidi Tworek on the Limits of Canadian Law

The Law Bytes podcast is back, starting with an episode on the limits of Canadian law in addressing the concerns associated with Grok AI, the AI chatbot that garnered global attention over the widespread creation and distribution of AI-generated sexualized deep fakes. Weaving together online harms, privacy, AI regulation, and platform regulation into a single issue, there have been service bans in some countries but Canada has thus far struggled to respond.

To help understand what has taken place and Canada’s law and policy options, Professor Heidi Tworek returns to the Law Bytes podcast. Professor Tworek is the Canada Research Chair and Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Her work explores how new communications technologies affect democracy in the past and present and she served on the government’s online harms advisory board.

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January 26, 2026 0 comments Podcasts
TikTok vote in Congress by Victoria Pickering CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/2pEHKNn

Canadian TikTok Ban Called Off as the Government Hits the Digital Policy Reset Button Once Again

The Carney government’s steady reset of Canadian digital policy continues as it has now backed off plans to ban TikTok from operating in Canada. The government’s approach, first announced in November 2024, never made any sense since the TikTok app remained available without restriction and the corporate ban weakened privacy enforcement and resulted in millions in lost cultural support. The policy was a true lose-lose-lose and seemed premised on piggybacking on U.S. legislation to ban the app. The change in U.S. administration effectively nixed those plans, leaving Canadians with the worst of both worlds: a corporate ban that created real harms with no discernible benefit and a Canadian TikTok app that would ultimately offer fewer safeguards than the U.S. equivalent.

The reset on the TikTok ban came through what amounts to a settlement between the government and TikTok that was made official yesterday by the federal court.

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January 22, 2026 2 comments News
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The Year in Review: Top Ten Michael Geist Substacks

My look back at 2025 concludes with a review of my most popular Substacks of the year. Much like my top ten blog posts, lawful access, privacy and digital policy were the most popular issues, though Substack also included a focus on Quebec’s Internet streaming legislation and multiple posts on the digital services tax.

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December 30, 2025 14 comments News
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The Year in Review: Top Ten Law Bytes Podcast Episodes

The final Law Bytes podcast of 2025 released last week took a look back at the year in digital policy. With the podcast on a holiday break, this post looks back at the ten most popular episodes of the year. Topping the charts this year was a discussion with Sukesh Kamra on law firm adoption of artificial intelligence and innovative technologies. The episode is part of the Law Bytes Professionalism Pack that enables Ontario lawyers to obtain accredited CLE professionalism hours. Other top episodes focused on digital policy under the Carney government, episodes on privacy law developments and a trio of episodes on Bill C-2, the government’s lawful access bill.

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December 29, 2025 9 comments News
10 by Leo Reynolds https://flic.kr/p/j2BS3 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts

This week’s Law Bytes podcast featured a look at the year in review in digital law and policy. Before wrapping up for the year, the next three posts over the holidays will highlight my most popular posts, podcast episodes, and Substacks of the past year. Today’s post starts with the top posts, in which two issues dominated: lawful access and antisemitism. While most of the top ten involves those two issues, the top post of the year featured an analysis of the government’s approach to the digital services tax, which ultimately resulted in an embarrassing climbdown by the government.

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December 23, 2025 9 comments News