The Duchess of Sussex, who has said she
avoids social media for “my own self-preservation”, has been the subject of a coordinated hate and misinformation campaign on Twitter, according to a new report.
Both she and Prince Harry, who are advocates for healthier social media, have been
targeted on the platform, with Meghan receiving about 80% of the abuse, according to the
Twitter analytics provider Bot Sentinel.
It analysed 114,000 tweets relating to the couple, and identified 83 accounts that it alleged were behind 70% of the more virulent anti-Sussex tweets.
“Our analysis allowed us to isolate 55 single-purpose accounts we identified as the primary hate accounts and 28 secondary hate accounts that mainly amplified the primary accounts,” the report said. With the accounts having a total of 187,631 followers, using analytic tools Bot Sentinel estimated “a combined unique potential reach of 17 million users”.
Some tweets used coded racist language. The pattern of how the accounts interacted with one another was not “organic”, the report said, suggesting a coordinated effort to amplify harassment of the couple. Most appeared to be generated by humans, Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s chief executive, said. He told the Washington Post: “We looked for automated accounts and found very little evidence of bot activity.”
