Communications Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Seattle University Law Review

Alcohol, automobiles, guns, lottery, loot boxes, meat, music, opioid painkillers, processed foods, prop bets, slot machines, television, tobacco, violent video games. Over the last century each of these has been subject to concerns—some might even say “moral panics”—from parents and policymakers about avoidable harms to kids and adults. In some cases we look back with the benefit of hindsight and dismiss those concerns as naïve or moralistic. In others we look back at them as justified or as having come too late to check an expanding industry before it did unfathomable harm while growing so powerful that it became all …

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

A Supreme Sidestep: The Justices’ Artful Dodge On Platform Immunity, Leslie Garfield Tenzer

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

The foiled ISIS plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts, coordinated by teens on social media platforms with a significant US presence, illustrates the dangerous consequences of unchecked online content. This incident, coupled with other tragic cases—such as the sexual exploitation of a minor lured through Facebook and Tyler Clementi’s suicide following a privacy violation on Twitter—highlights the urgent need to reassess 47 U.S.C. § 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Enacted in 1996, this law provides broad immunity to interactive computer services, including social media platforms, shielding them from liability for user-generated content. While initially celebrated as a catalyst for …

The Illusion Of Inclusion: The False Promise Of The New Governance Project For Content Moderation, Brenda Dvoskin

Fordham Law Review

Because private companies now control the most prominent communication platforms, the most pressing question in the field of content moderation is how to ensure that the governance of public discourse responds to public values. The prevailing approach, given that the state cannot regulate speech directly, is that state regulation can be substituted with audited self-regulation, broad stakeholder participation, and negotiated rulemaking. In this model, which this Article refers to as the “new governance model for content moderation,” companies include advocates as representatives of the public in their processes to govern online speech. Ideally, they negotiate policy goals and share responsibility …

Protecting The Presumption Of Innocence: Tiktok Detectives, Misinformation And Private Content Moderation, Paige Sanders

Utah Law Review

The presumption of innocence is a fundamental component of the American legal system, but modern media platforms undermine its effectiveness. Platforms like TikTok have become popular sites for true crime content, allowing online detectives to spin their own narratives about high-profile crimes, often with little regard for the truth. This trend undermines the integrity of the legal system and causes irreversible harm to those being baselessly accused on social media. While TikTok and other social media platforms employ guidelines to moderate users’ content, they consistently fall short in preventing the spread of unverified true crime content. This Note explores TikTok’s …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

An Impossible Task: Enforcing Disclosure Requirements In A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry, Keelin Ferris

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Users of the first global social network, MySpace, could have never imagined that a mere twenty years later, teenagers could be millionaires making thirty-second videos out of their parents’ basement. Social media platforms have blossomed and advanced to an unpredictable level in a short amount of time. The growth of TikTok, surpassing one billion users, has been one of the most substantial contributors to the change in landscape.[1] In 2025, “social media influencers” come in all shapes and sizes.[2] Social media users can scroll through Instagram reels and stumble upon their fellow PTA member, co-worker, or grandmother promoting …

Table Of Contents

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

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Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

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Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

The Fox Effect? Implications Of Recruiting Corporate Law To Combat Misinformation, Lili Levi

Articles

In 2023, Fox Corporation settled U.S. Dominion’s defamation action over Fox News’ broadcast of false election fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election for the staggering sum of $787.5 million. Now, a shareholder derivative action is pending in Delaware against the company’s board of directors for breach of state corporate law fiduciary oversight duties for their failure to prevent such defamatory programming. Beyond the specifics of the case, this development portends the emergence of a new politico-legal strategy—using corporate governance requirements as a weapon to promote press accountability and combat misinformation in public discourse. The question addressed in this Essay …

Internet Search Engines’ Privacy Violations And The Lack Of Federal Regulation To Protect Consumers Rights, Elsa M. G. Rodriguez Ogando

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The United States’ current legal framework regarding internet search engines is disadvantageous to consumers. Federal privacy laws (although not encompassing search engines) grant businesses a strong legal basis in privacy claims and alibies for arbitrary behavior; these laws favor businesses over consumers. Moreover, state privacy laws empower nonspecific agencies to oversee privacy matters and enforce consumers’ rights. Thus, the U.S. privacy legal framework is in need of a new federal law that establishes consumers’ rights, as well as a federal agency dedicated solely to privacy matters. This Article proposes a federal law recommendation based on the standards of the California …

Chronically Online: Apportioning Liability In Social Media Litigation Based On User Engagement, Rebecca Vangelos

Fordham Law Review

The average American teenager spends nearly five hours on social media every day. This result is by design: social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok deploy persuasive technologies—including infinite scroll, personalized content recommendation feeds, and dark patterns—to capture and retain teen attention. These intentional design features exploit adolescent vulnerabilities to foster social media dependency. Accordingly, a growing body of scientific evidence links the extensive use of social media to the teen mental health crisis in the United States.

Despite these negative effects, social media companies have largely evaded accountability for the harm they have caused to teens. Recent lawsuits …

The Doors Of Janus: A Critical Analysis Of The Socio-Technical Forces Eroding Trust In The Rule Of Law, Anuj Puri, Esther Keymolen

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The Rule of Law is neither just a principle nor solely the institutions that embody that principle, a critical aspect of the Rule of Law is its grounding in trust which often gets neglected in the surrounding discourse. When the citizens' trust in the Rule of Law weakens, the Rule of Law becomes fragile. In this article we examine the impact of emerging technologies on the citizens' trust in the Rule of Law. Our analysis is specifcally focused on the effect of systemic disinformation which is likely to worsen with the advent of Generative AI, algorithmic misgovernance, and the digitalization …

Shoot The Messenger: Why Section 230 Does Not Shield Suggestive Content Delivery, Alexander Heinkele

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Internet companies have frequently relied on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to avoid liability for third-party content hosted on their platforms. However, over time, companies began to take advantage of the broad cover of Section 230 in circumstances outside the statute’s original scope. This Note advocates for a more nuanced interpretation of the statute as it applies to suggestive algorithms and offers a proposal for amending Section 230 to better reflect the modern digital landscape.

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead