Podcast 111 – Report finds Twitter accounts, intentionally targeted Meghan Markle & Prince Harry with hate

10/27/21 • 5 min

During a period in which there is increasing pressure for social media platforms to do more to curb on-line hate speech, and when there are more and more reports about the connection between inflammatory speech online and violent acts, this week a report was released into the hate speech on Twitter directed against Meghan and Harry.
The report (click here to see it https://botsentinel.com/reports/documents/duke-and-duchess-of-sussex/report-10-26-2021.pdf ) was produced by the Twitter monitoring organization called Bot Sentinel.

In their report into the Twitter hate directed at Meghan and Harry since they stepped down from Royal life in early 2020, Bot Sentinel report that a relatively small number of what they term single purpose anti-Meghan and Harry accounts create and disseminate most of the hateful content.

Bot Sentinel report that they analysed 114,000 tweets and they isolated about 55 single purpose account as the primary hate accounts, with about 28 secondary hate accounts with these 83 accounts combined having about 187.5 thousand followed. These 83 accounts were responsible for 70% of the original and derivative content targeting Harry and Meghan on Twitter, with the potential to ultimately reach approx. 17 million twitter users.

Bot Sentinel state that the hate messaging was not confined to Twitter. The accounts would often Tweet links to private blogs, Instagram accounts, and YouTube focused predominantly on Meghan and Harry.

Bot Sentinel name and shame these 83 accounts, and conclude that in their opinion the users were violating Twitter’s rules on platform manipulation and spam, abuse and harassment policies, and in publishing private information. Twitter’s terms of service forbid abusive behaviours and engagement that harasses or intimidates or is otherwise intended to shame or degrade others, and they prohibit coordination between accounts that results in harm to others.

Bot Sentinel CEO and founder Christopher Bouzy was interviewed by BuzzFeed News about the Meghan and Harry report. He told BuzzFeed that when Bot Sentinel announced they would be launching an investigation into anti-Meghan and Harry accounts on Twitter, he became the target of a fully-fledged harassment campaign unlike he said, anything that he or his team had experienced before. Bouzy described the harassment that he and his team received as different and personal with false allegations being made against him to try to pre-emptively discredit the report’s findings.

Mr. Bouzy emphasized that the negative Twitter activity towards Meghan and Harry is not being done by automated BOT accounts but by real accounts run by humans. He added that these people know how the manipulate the algorithms, manipulate Twitter and stay under the radar to avoid detection and suspension.

BuzzFeed approached Twitter about the findings in the Bot Sentinel report who informed BuzzFeed they were actively investigating the information and the accounts referenced in the report, saying they would take action of accounts that violate the Twitter Rules.

Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili. You can reach out to me through my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/ and on twitter https://twitter.com/JeanetteSongolo

Show written and produced by Jeanette Songolo.
Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili and in the meantime watch out for other posts on all things Sussex on my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/

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Podcast 110 – Meghan Markle urges Federal Politicians to enact a Right to Paid Leave Policy

In an open letter to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, Meghan asks for all politicians, be they Republicans or Democrats, to unite to enact a Paid Leave Policy as part of what is being considered under the latest U.S. budget bill negotiations.

Meghan wrote, she said, not as an elected official nor as a politician, but as a mother - advocating alongside groups such as https://paidleaveforall.org/ for rights for parents and caregivers to be able to be able to spend the first few months at home with their babies, rather than having to rush back to work, due to the fact that they need their wages to financially survive.

In her letter Meghan writes of her own humble upbringing and how her family appreciated the value of money. Meghan says how lucky she and Harry now are in their own lives such that after the birth of Archie and Lili, when they were both overjoyed and overwhelmed, they did not to have to face the dilemma of having to choose between staying at home with their baby without pay, versus going back to work - this being the harsh reality for many parents in America.

Per the Paid Leave for All website, the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world without a national paid leave policy , which meant that when the pandemic hit, the U.S. were unprepared. They add that nearly one in four employed mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth, and one in five retirees leave the workforce earlier than planned to care for an ill family member.

Meghan adds her voice to this campaign writing that "paid leave should be a national right, rather than a patchwork option limited to those whose employers have policies in place, or those who live in one the few States in the U.S. where a leave program exists".

Meghan’s letter was written as the same time that a group of Democrats in the Senate and House sent their own letter to President Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, urging them to include a more robust family and medical paid leave program in the legislation.

This group of Democrats argue that a national paid leave program must cover “all workers” because “at one point or another, nearly everyone will need to take leave from work to give or receive care, whether it’s to welcome a new child, be there for an aging parent or loved one, or to recover from their own major surgery, serious illness like cancer or substance use disorder."

Something that Meghan did not point out in her own letter but which was mentioned in other reports on this issue, is that workers who do currently have access to paid leave in the U.S. are disproportionately the higher-paid employees at large companies and that Black and Latino workers are likely not to have access to the benefit.

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Podcast 112 – Continuing collaborative work + Meghan Markle & Prince Harry’s pledge to Carbon Net Zero

Meghan and Harry, who in the past have been criticized in the media for using too many aeroplane flights, continue to advocate – using the more environmentally friendly means of letter writing, emails and phone calls – to push for Paid Leave to be included in the U.S. social spending Bill, as well as continuing to press wealthy G20 countries to share COVID-19 vaccines with low-to-mid income countries.

As other members of the UK Royal Family attended at the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Meghan and Harry’s Archewell organization took action and announced that they pledged to a sustainable future, aiming to become net zero by 2030.

In their announcement that is published on their Archewell website, Meghan and Harry speak of their long-standing commitment to the planet, both together and prior to their marriage, with global projects and partnerships dating back over a decade.

Meghan and Harry say that they will work with an independent consultant to track all Archewell-related activities to understand what their current carbon footprint is, then using 2022 as a baseline year, they will develop a plan for Archewell that aligns with the latest guidance from leading organizations, like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science-Based Targets Initiative, saying they will be offsetting remaining emissions until they achieve net zero in 2030 and beyond.

As well as this work, we hear that Meghan will soon join a panel discussion as part of the two-day New York Times DealBook Summit. Meghan's event is titled "Minding the Gap" when she joins Mellody Hobson, the Co-C.E.O. and President of Ariel Investments, to ponder the question - How can women reach economic and professional parity?

It has also been announced that Prince Harry is participating in a conference being put on by the https://re.wired.com/c/re-wired (WIRED) organization, which will discuss all things technology and how it affects the way that we live, work, and connect. The November conference is being described as a series of conversations between technologists and people who think hard about the consequences of technologies on society, economics, sustainability, and our future.

Prince Harry will be part of a panel discussion called The Internet Lie Machine – looking into what is called the real cost of a lie on the internet—to ourselves, our communities, our societies.

More details of both of these events and links to them as well as other stories that don’t make it into this podcast can be found on my twitter account @Jeanette Songolo https://twitter.com/JeanetteSongolo