Berlin 2025: Social Media Tribunal

The Social Media Tribunal is an initiative of The Court of the Citizens of the World (CCW), and was organized in Berlin from 16-21 March 2025. The Court is a private initiative, with no formal legal authority, whose objective is “to prosecute world leaders and regimes that commit human rights violations: Crime of aggression and Crimes against humanity.” Previous cases were tribunals on Putin and China. Obviously, Social Media is not a world leader as such, but the analogy between a powerful country and social media is often made. For instance, in a Dutch piece I argued that like governments big tech controls and influences people, and they have power and money. One point they differ in is that human rights as such do not apply to them. However, besides several scholars also EU law recently explicitly applies human rights to companies, like in Directive 2024/1760 on corporate sustainability due diligence: “The new rules will ensure that companies in scope identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe.”