Meghan Markle and Prince Harry target of hate campaign on Twitter
Social media trolls have targeted Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, and now, due to a new investigation, there’s additional evidence of where the hate comes from and how the often false information travels
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have long spoken out against social media hatred, including their own, and now they have scientific proof to back them up.
The findings of Bot Sentinel’s research into hostile Twitter behaviour targeting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were disclosed. Bot Sentinel is a platform that tracks inauthentic Twitter accounts and trolls. The corporation began its investigation in October by examining 114,000 tweets about the couple.
Bot Sentinel discovered a link between the accounts by examining other factors such as retweets and mentions. “Our investigation indicated that these accounts were shamelessly coordinating on the network,” the report stated, “and at least one account was actively soliciting people to join their hate movement on Twitter.”
According to , while Twitter had already suspended 40% of the major 55 hate accounts, the accounts were avoiding punishment by putting “parody” in their profile bios or using coded racial language. Bot Sentinel utilised Twitter accounts with no friends or followers to conduct the study, but that didn’t stop the platform’s algorithm from noticing their tweeting behaviours. According to the research, “after viewing two hate accounts, Twitter’s algorithm began proposing more hate accounts.” “Twitter has recommended that we follow these hate accounts several times.”
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As stated in the report, “According to findings, the majority of the nasty content on Twitter was created and circulated by a small number of single-purpose anti-Meghan and Harry accounts. The main accounts, on the other hand, received support that allowed their content to be repackaged and disseminated by accounts with a large following. We noticed the principal accounts coordinating their activity and avoiding discovery using a variety of approaches. In other words, the preponderance of anti-Meghan and anti-Harry action was not natural.”
The report, according to Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel, caused an immediate effect online. “Shortly after we published the study, we noticed a dramatic decrease in activity targeting Meghan and Harry,” he tweeted. “It’s quite improbable that we would have seen such a severe decline in such a short period of time if the activity had been biological.”