Overview
(July 16, 2025, Washington, DC) – When the Court of the Citizens of the World decided to hold one of its show trials to condemn social media platforms for threatening democracy, in Berlin, Germany on March 17-21, 2025, Steptoe’s Pantelis Michalopoulos and Anne-Gabrielle Haie rose to the challenge of defending the platforms and their freedom of speech, even though, as Michalopoulos puts it, it felt a little like Daniel entering the lions’ den. To be sure, the trial was not a model of due process: Anne-Gabrielle informed the court that the indictment violated the court’s own rules, forcing the court to take the remarkable step of changing its rules mid-trial to justify its indictment after the fact. But while the court’s conclusion was entirely predictable, the judges heard a spirited defense of U.S. social media platforms, and a full-throated explanation of the potential discriminatory effect of European laws such as the Digital Services Act, from the Steptoe lawyers.
Blaming the social media platforms, in Pantelis’ words, is like the Persian King Xerxes whipping the waters of the Hellespont to punish them for the storm that destroyed his army’s bridges in 480 B.C. Michalopoulos argued that social media, though imperfect, “are the most democratic medium there has ever been. The only interactive one. The only one that allows the disenfranchised to talk back.”
“How do we cure social media imperfections?” Michalopoulos continued. “Not by punishing the Mediterranean Sea. Not by suppressing social media. Not by closing our ears… By engaging. By coming up with creative ways to resonate with the insecurities, resentments, alienations and anger that fuel extremism.”
Michalopoulos concluded that social media can be a huge benefactor of democracy: it is “a flawed benefactor, to be sure; but then, someone said democracy is the worst regime but for all the others.” Read Pantelis’s closing argument here.
About Steptoe
In more than 110 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
