Meghan Markle has been the target of a coordinated hate campaign on Twitter, according to a new report that analysed 114,000 tweets.
A report from Twitter analytics organisation Bot Sentinel said a total of 83 accounts were allegedly “brazenly coordinating on the platform” to target the Duchess and her husband Prince Harry with hate content. The vast majority of hate and misinformation on Twitter about the couple had spread from these accounts, whose single goal was to create a campaign of negativity.
The analysis estimates that 55 single-purpose accounts were identified as “primary hate accounts”, while 28 “secondary hate accounts” amplified these primary accounts. With the help of their combined 187,631 followers, these accounts were responsible for about 70 per cent of all original and derivative hate content directed at Meghan and Harry on Twitter.
“Our research found that a relatively small number of single-purpose anti-Meghan and Harry accounts created and disseminated most of the hateful content on Twitter,” the report said.
“However, the primary accounts had assistance that allowed their content to be repackaged and shared by accounts with a considerable following. We observed the primary accounts coordinating their activities and using various techniques to avoid detection. In short, the majority of the anti-Meghan and Harry activity wasn’t organic.”
Bot Sentinel’s report said Twitter had previously suspended 40 per cent of the primary hate accounts, and the accounts were using tactics to avoid suspension.
“Some put “parody” in their profiles, although it wasn’t a parody account. Others would use racist coded language about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to avoid detection,” the report notes. “We also observed several accounts either lock or completely deactivate their profiles to preserve their accounts.”
The report includes examples of the type of tweets that were posted by the accounts.
The Duchess of Sussex has previously spoken about the impact social media has had on her, especially when she was pregnant in 2019. She once described herself as the “most trolled person in the entire world” and told Fortune in 2020 that she didn’t use social media “for her own self-preservation”.
Prince Harry has called on social media companies to do more to combat disinformation, hate speech, and bullying on their platforms, writing that a “rebuilding of compassionate, trustworthy communities needs to be at the hear of where we go. And this approach must extend to the digital community”.
“We have an opportunity to do better and remake the digital world, to look at the past and use it to inform the future,” he wrote in an article published by FastCompany.
“It shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence that the rise of social media has been matched by a rise in division amongst us globally.”
A spokesperson for Twitter told Buzzfeed News that they are “actively investigating the information and accounts referenced in this report — we will take action on accounts that violate the Twitter Rules.”