The Duchess of Sussex’s appearance (in person) at the New York Times’ Dealbook summit was all over my timeline yesterday, but it looks like Prince Harry’s appearance at the re: Wired summit is causing the biggest stir this week. First, it appears that Harry and Meghan are in New York already, and Harry video-conferenced into the Wired summit from NYC. Harry’s part of the Wired summit was all about disinformation campaigns and online hate. Harry said that he was emailing Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, on January 5th of this year, and Harry noted to Dorsey that MAGA terrorists were using the platform to plot and organize the insurrection. Harry also spoke about the term “Megxit,” which he correctly points out is a hate term from racists which began to be widely used in the mainstream media.
On the insurrection: Prince Harry has revealed he told Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged ahead of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. “Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6 when I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before and then it happened, and I haven’t heard from him since.” The prince said he has not met Dorsey in person. Twitter declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.
Online misinformation: Harry criticized Twitter and Facebook for allowing misinformation to spread on their platforms, adding that the scale of the problem is terrifying and no one is safe from it. It’s ruining lives and destroying families, he said. “I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth,” he said, adding that the U.K. press conflates profit with purpose and news with entertainment. He added: “I know this story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness and obviously I’m determined not to lose the mother of my children to the same thing.”
This problem is solvable: Harry said his household won’t be on social media “until things change” but he believes change is possible. “We’ve been led to believe that this challenge is too big to fix or is too big to solve,” he said. “What I’ve learned over the last six months, as part of the Aspen commission, is that simply isn’t true.” Harry said a small number of social media accounts are responsible for a vast chunk of misinformation, which are allowed to “create a huge amount of chaos online and disruption without any consequence whatsoever.”
He cites Bot Sentinel’s findings: He cited an independent report that found that more than 70% of the hate speech about his wife Meghan can be traced to fewer than 50 accounts, adding that British journalists interact and amplify what he described as hate and lies.
On the term Megxit: “The term ‘Megxit’ was and is a misogynistic term and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents. It grew and grew and grew onto mainstream media.”
Re: “Megxit.” This is why I always used the term “Sussexit,” because it was both Harry and Meghan exiting the UK and it gave ownership to both of them for making that decision. It’s painful to see mainstream media use the term “Megxit” to describe what happened in 2020 without acknowledging that the term was being used long before the Sussexit. Anti-Meghan trolls used “Megxit” to describe their plot to bully and abuse Meghan out of the UK and out of her marriage to Harry.
As for what he says about emailing Jack Dorsey… I believe it. It’s not like Harry was psychic or anything, a lot of journalists and watchdog groups were raising the alert about the increase in violent online rhetoric in the days and weeks leading up to the Jan. 6th insurrection. While the insurrectionists were violent terrorists attempting an overthrow of the government, many of them were incredibly stupid – stupid enough to leave their fingerprints all over the plot to attack the Capitol.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
I hope the Jan 6 Commission gets their hands on that email.
Why? They aren’t investigating Twitter, they are investigating the government employees who plotted and organized the coup.
If those outsiders, govt employees, and politicians who orchestrated the attempted coup used twitter as part of it? Yes, they’d be investigating twitter.
Turn Elizabeth Warren loose on Twitter and Facebook. She’ll clean their clocks given half a chance.
Twitter & Facebook are ALSO guilty, because they allow to this Domestic Maga Terrorists to coordinate the attack in their platforms. If we lived in a fair world… this companies like Twitter & Facebook, would pay for their crimes, BUT this is NOT a fair world… So nothing will happen to them, even if they are also guilty of the Capitol attack!! 😐
It’s not a fair world. I don’t know if the Jan 6 insurrection propelled this or if it’s something well known or used. 19 days later…..
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation
The term Megxit cropped up even before they were married. Trolls demanding that Meghan be banished from the UK in disgrace for daring to be with Harry and yelling, “Megxit now!”
It’s so telling that that’s the word that found its way into use by the mainstream media.
It’s so obviously racist and misogynist I can’t help but think the mainstream media picked it up on purpose.
Everytime Harry speaks you can tell that Meghan didnt have to convince him of anything. He had enough and didnt want her tortured like his mother.
I am so glad that he brought up the term “Megxit.” It’s such a strong example of the reach of some of these hate accounts, plus just reminds you of what they faced from the very beginning.
I believe he emailed Jack about the coup attempt – his was definitely wasn’t the only email, but i can believe it was part of what was, at the time, an ongoing conversation between Harry’s team and Twitter about the hate etc that is allowed to grow on twitter, and then it happened and Jack probably ghosted a lot of people who had warned him.
Diana would be so proud of him.
Yes, Harry did a fabulous job with that interview. He went straight to the heart of the matter, and he was clear and succinct. It sends out a very clear message about what we have known for years. Well done Harry! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾.
We all watched the beginning of the fall of (US) democracy in real time, though we might not have known they were going to storm the castle, ahem, Capitol. And that none—not one of them—would be punished for it.
That means it will happen again and be successful next time. I’m very grateful for my true blue state, but wonder if it can hold the fall of America.
I can’t get over that 70 years ago people were jailed and blacklisted for daring to think/say that maybe communism isn’t such a bad thing. Or for being around someone who was a “communist.”
And now you can storm the freaking Capitol and build a dang gallows and…. it’s all just fine? Just another day.
Harry was dropping truth bombs left and right yesterday!
Honestly, I’m worried now he’s painted an even larger target on his back and his family’s by invoking MAGA trolls and Jan 6. Obviously he wouldn’t support them, but putting it out there that he tried to foil their plans by informing Jack Dorsey makes him their new mark. I want to be wrong, but these people are deranged.
Harry was trying to foil their plans? Half of Twitter was @jack for weeks warning January 6 would be a coup attempt. Jack Dorsey knew perfectly well what he wrought by January 5.
@Mac Not sure where the reply feature is under your comment. I know half of twitter knew. But these people are deranged and irrational. They need an irrational and high profile target. Your average user does not fit that criteria.
The MAGATs have been involved in the Meghan hate from the start. If you look at any of their disgusting feeds, they hate on Meghan and love on Drumpf.
No, Harry is doing the right thing. The evidence is there, and I am sure that he could say a lot more about these vile activities but for now is holding back.
If Harry doesn’t say what he knows then the bad guys win. Sometimes you have to take a stand for the truth even if it means getting blowback from them.
I have always said and will continue to say Meghan isn’t the problem … Harry is! He is the one with very little filter; Meghan is more measured or maybe she has more experience dealing with BS
Is he a problem though? I see it as this decision to leave the RF was his because of how his wife and child had been treated. The problem is with the royal family, and British media, promoting racist and toxic ideas.
I think she meant Harry is the problem for the royal family and for the press.
my favorite reaction on Twitter about his book was from Love Lola and she just said
“You were so worried about her you forgot about me:
A Memoir”
and it made me laugh because its so true. They were all so worried about what Meghan would say, MEGHAN’S memoir, meghan’s interview – Harry is the one who is blowing the whole thing wide open.
I think Harry is the ‘problem’ in the way that the British Media thinks Meghan is the ‘problem’. Harry is the one (it seems to me) who really drove their escape from the royal family. Harry is the one who STAYS calling out the racist British media and Harry is more than ready to burn down the whole institution for how they’ve treated his wife and children. Everyone thought M was the Machievallen mastermind behind all of this, the whole time it was my man Big H. Love that for him.
@becks1 ah ok I see! Sorry @VS.
ITA that everyone kept blaming Meghan when this whole decision was pushed forward by Harry. I’m sure that it was a choice by both of them but I don’t doubt that Harry was the one to insist. I think Meghan would have continued to try her best and try to win them over until she literally couldn’t anymore.
Thanks @Becks1… problem for the uk press and rf
Standing up for your wife and children is not a “problem”. It’s what any decent man would do, and I would’ve lost all respect for Harry if he hadn’t spoken out loudly and passionately against the attacks.
ETA: I assume you meant he’s a problem for the RF. My comment is directed at them and that shitty point of view, not you!
She is well educated. He is not. She had to make it in the world & he has been coddled.
‘Coddled’? More than most general public, but certainly not by the family that was supposed to be protecting and supporting him his entire life. They and their employees spent decades putting him down, abusing him, shoving him aside, and using him to bolster his abusive older brother’s reputation.
Why does every know-nothing insist on pontificating negatively…always negatively, about the lives of people who they obviously envy and are jealous and bitter about? Have you no shame?
I don’t think doing active and dangerous duty in Afghanistan is being “coddled”. He was always treated as the “spare” and had to work damn hard to make his place in the world.
Yes, Meghan has a college education but let’s not forget Harry was putting some really good projects in action before he met Meghan. He had ideas and imitative, W has the college education and he’s Still dumb as hell. Harry had a stellar reputation surrounding the projects he put together on his own. I think Harry is still quite smart without a degree. Harry and Meghan together are fantastic. They seem to balance each other out when it comes to ideas and putting them in motion.
More measured? Harry was telling the truth, he was saying what everyone knows and he was able to sum it up perfectly, and without getting too emotional as well. I cannot fault anything he said.
I agree, it seems Meghan might have been cool with dropping the Oprah interview and saying some corrective but still “nice” things (e.g. it was Meghan crying before the wedding, not Kate, but Kate is still a good person) and then moving on with her life. She has had the experience of managing her relationship with her father for years so I do think she probably had more of an idea of how the RF would behave post-Sussexit and maybe also a feeling of “been there, done that, only so much I’m willing to fight on this”. I’m sure this was also not her first experience with racism, even if it was the nastiest and most public. Whereas this is Harry’s first go-round at estrangement and his understanding of racism and misogyny is still relatively recent, so he’s got a LOT more energy to burn.
Harry’s not the problem. The problem is the family he comes from. I know he won’t but I really wish he would open the entire can of worms on the royal family. I wish he would tell us the name of the person that asked about Archie skin color. Give us a name and face. He won’t bcuz he really seems to love and respect his grandmother and he isn’t going to go there bcuz it would take some shine off of the old bats legacy. I honestly don’t believe Harry thinks his grandmother had anything to do with the media attacks against Meghan and himself the past 5 years. I think he can see the truth surrounding everyone else that’s involved except for his grandmother. The sad thing is she is a devil in disguise, she has been stirring the pot along with the rest of them. She is the one that made it a point to strip Harry of duties he loved as a way of punishing and hurting him. She had the last word. She’s able to keep track of Andrews mess so she was quite capable of protecting Harry and Meghan. She didn’t choose to. I think Meghan can see queenies role in things but Harry either doesn’t see or doesn’t choose to see or acknowledge it
The royalists will tell you that the media had no role in Diana’s death. I saw a few members of the Royal rota make fun of Harry calling them pirates with press cards but I know that everytime Harry speaks out against the media they feel hurt about it because they believed that they were friends with him. They didn’t know that Harry was waiting for the day he could speak freely about the press and what they did to his family. Hopefully in his book he will talk more about it and the press’ contract with the Royal Family.
I think Harry might go ham on the press and some others in his book. He has always been the one to say things plainly. First in Oprah, then The Me You Can’t See, and now this interview. The memoir is going to take things further especially in regards to the British media and how they operate.
@JT: I hope he does.
Oh he will 1000% go H.A.M. on the British press. That I never doubted. It’s how much will he take to task the monarchy and specific members of his family that I wonder about.
Huh, I did not realize that trolls called their bullying of Meghan a Megxit even before Harry and Meghan left. The hurt feelings over the term make much more sense to me now. I honestly thought it was a cute pun, but stopped using it when it was clear people were upset by it, even though I didn’t really see why it was such a big deal. Thanks for explaining that!
Yup, it was created by hate accounts as part of a movement to drive Meghan out of the royal family and away from Harry.
exactly – it started going around troll twitter accounts as early as 2019 – they were using it to try and talk about harry leaving meghan
Yes, and elements within the Palace were part of that movement. I wouldn’t be surprised if William was involved.
it was in the Fail comments at the time of the wedding or even before that. the trolls trying to get H to dump her. the commenters were calling for Megxit very early on.
Early on by trolls. Any outlet/person that uses that term yet, after they’ve been gone for almost 2 years now, is part of and an active particpant in the problem.imo
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/01/meghan-markle-megxit-problem
Im glad he addressed Megxit. I hate that word and I’ve only seen it used to disparage Meghan. I prefer Sussexit, and that’s probably because of the fine folks here at CB.
And Lainey.
I don’t know if I agree with Harry that the biggest problems with social media are really fixable, and certainly not with the lack of will we’ve seen from people like Dorsey and Zuckerberg. And until people are taught to think critically, which Americans especially don’t seem to learn, I don’t know how effective any changes from the top could really be.
And this is actually kinda sad, but I love that Harry used the word “misogynist” to describe the term “Megxit”. We women know these things already, and while we don’t NEED men to validate our beliefs, there are so many men who are afraid to call misogyny by its rightful name (the same is true of white people when it comes to calling out racism. How pathetic is is that some people are apparently worried about being “mean” to racists and misogynists?)
The thing about thinking critically is that it takes time – not necessarily weeks, but even just a beat to step back and say “huh” or ask “why.” But I think our society has trained people to react instantly – you have to come in first, get the scoop before anyone else, you snooze you lose. And with the onslaught of content flooding the internet, it’s really hard to separate what’s important and what is just plain crap.
Unfortunately, I don’t think society has trained us to react instantly— it’s hardwired into our biology. We make snap judgments because that’s how we developed evolutionarily, and it served its purpose for thousands of years in the propagation of our species.
However, I do think social media has monetized, incentivized and rewarded this behavior so it has become a worldwide norm. Critical thinking takes time, discourse, and access to multiple sources of information. The only way a dialog lasts nowadays is if it trends for an extended period of time, but even then it just devolves into emotional reactions that further entrench people in their original positions.
I don’t think the issues with social media are fixable in the sense that there’s a silver bullet, but there are a series of precautionary measures that can be taken to hone in on the most damaging aspects.
For example, a targeted study on the increased rate of suicide among teenage girls may very well lead to insights on how to curb the media they’re shown on their news feed. And it takes thoughtful programming and consideration of the algorithms, which it seems FB is unwilling to do. Instead, they focus on trying to ban certain content, which doesn’t address the root of the problem. Like, why not have teenage girls have in their newsfeed stories about being positive about body image alongside whatever fashion posts they read? Just a simple for every x number of articles from entertainment outlets showing super-thin women, there are y number of articles about self care, self confidence, healthy eating and exercise?
Twitter has a different problem just because of how the platform works, but one of their primary issues seems to be trolls and how easy it is to amplify a certain message. They did that huge sweep in their platform to remove troll accounts— but why/how did they let it get that bad in the first place, to the point that people lost tens of thousands of followers. There are services that allow you to buy trolling services— surely there’s a way to identify these accounts? I know things get more complex the more measures social media companies take, but that’s not an excuse for these companies to be complacent.
I don’t think many people could have anticipated the rise of TikTok, but I think a large part of it is because people are leaving FB. People do not trust FB. (It doesn’t help that FB owns IG, and I don’t know the particular issues of IG). Zuckerberg is trying to rebrand it as “Meta,” some kind of all encompassing social media platform, but it’s just putting lipstick on a pig.
Just— they need to stop looking at it as one monolithic issue and break it into smaller, manageable pieces. You can’t wage a war against all misinformation. But you can prioritize certain types of misinformation, instead of fact-checking videos that purport to show sharks washed up onshore after a hurricane. These companies have devised ways to suppress and promote certain results that come up in keyword searches. There is no reason they can’t do the same for misinformation— but it’s not profitable (at the moment).
There was a lot of chatter before Jan 6 that indicated that Trump supporters were planning on doing /something/, including going to the capitol. So I’m not surprised that Harry picked up on it and decided to email. And also not surprised Jack did nothing.
I do like that he mentioned the origins of “Megxit”. There are some people who aren’t aware of the origins and think it’s a pun generated by the media instead of a campaign to drive Meghan out before she married Harry so they use it “innocently” especially as it’s often repeated by the media.
And I said before that the courtiers/rota are too busy worrying about what Meghan will say when they should have been worried about Harry. He’s the one who’s naming names and being a lot direct about things. He’s also been in the system since birth and I am sure he’s heard/seen things the royals do not want out there.
When I saw the headlines last night about him warning Jack about the coup before Jan 6, tbh I rolled my eyes, which I now suspect was exactly the purpose of those headlines, but actually reading that he was corresponding back and forth with Jack prior to Jan 6 and mentioned a coup being planned- I believe it. Once he said emails, I knew he had receipts. Like, how are you gonna accuse someone of making shit up to weirdly self-aggrandize when they mention a paper trail that backs up what they’re saying? And after thinking about it, I’m sure a ton of people were emailing Jack Dorsey about a coup being planned on social media- like you say, the insurrectionists certainly weren’t being secret about it- and Harry was just one of them, being as involved in the problem of online misinformation and radicalization as he and Meghan are. It makes total sense that they’d be having conversations about it with executives at social media companies prior to Jan 6.
What twitter should have done is f-ckin shut down Trump’s account from the beginning. Twitter gave him such a huge platform that he otherwise wouldn’t have had, even as POTUS.
It is still ridiculous and utterly galling that he was permitted to “lead” as President on twitter. That the media were actually having to follow his 24/7 spewings for policy.
Im glad someone with a hudge platform is calling him out. More people need to call him out.
Harry and Meghan are a force! Diana would be so proud.
I absolutely love how Harry is saying, back the F off my wife or else.
We all need a Harry as a Husband
Make no mistake, our population is being radicalized by hate content online. It’s the new propaganda machine. It’s good to see platforms being held accountable for hate speech and terrorism. Twitter should have censored Trump long ago and yes, they bear some blame for letting hate related content fester and boil over. We can no longer say that it’s “just a vessel” for what already exists. These echo chambers are powerful and destructive.
Harry articulates his points so well and it does not surprise me as he always comes across as highly intelligent. This all makes me wonder if the numerous stories of him being dim were completely fabricated in an attempt to embiggen the truly dim FFK. How many of those stories to minimize our handsome ginger prince were meant to cover up the many failures of the FFK.
I’m happy that he called it for what it was, a coup, specifically, a coup d’état. Insurrection is too mild a word. This wasn’t people boarding a ship and tossing tea into the drink to express their displeasure about taxes. This was the use of violence by a group to overthrow a government. A duly elected government carrying out what they were constitutionally required to do. Something that was supposed to be mere formality. What happened on January 6, 2021 was supposed to happen only in, so called, Third World “banana republics”.
These people were radicalised on YouTube video channels and connected through social media. If it happened in any Middle Eastern or African nation, everyone would be saying this par for the course. Well, everywhere and anywhere can be made into a golf course. Social media is media, and they need to be regulated and broken up using and building on existing anti-trust legislation, because self regulation in corporate entities is not the answer.
I remember saying the same thing to my brother the weekend before 1/6 too, it was extremely obvious at the time if you were spending any time on social media. They were openly planning it on twitter and reddit.
Harry and Meghan are right, social media will continue to be a real problem and a threat to democracy until they get things like this under control.