Kensington Palace’s release of Prince Louis’s birthday portrait on Tuesday made me remember just how bonkers the Mother’s Day fiasco was as it unfolded in real time. It was such a chaotic 24 hours, made even more surreal by the fact that it was all happening ON Oscar night. That was March 10-11th, and the Princess of Wales had already been missing for two and a half months. More rounds of shenanigans followed until the cancer-announcement video, which aired on March 22nd. It should not be underestimated that for a good eight-week period, “Where Is Kate” was THE biggest story. People from all walks of life were talking about it and theorizing about what the f–k was going on. Every palace lie, every obfuscation, every bonkers conspiracy, every piece of faked or manipulated media just added fuel to an enormous unfolding scandal.
Over the past month though, the British media has been doing the most to blame the entire thing on anyone other than Prince William and the clowns who work for the palace. There have been multiple stories about how “Russian hackers” and foreign-state actors are the ones behind the whole fiasco. The latest is that the British government insists that a Russian group “fueled conspiracy theories” about Kate. Wait until you see how many accounts they’re talking about.
A Russian hacking group named Doppelgänger fuelled conspiracy theories about the Princess of Wales, an online security expert said. The group, which was first detected spreading misinformation in 2022, is run by a commercial organisation out of Russia to sow distrust in public institutions, including the British monarchy.
Martin Innes, a professor from the Security, Crime, and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University, said: “They will try to leap on and hijack any major story that they think that they can manipulate to further Russia’s aims, so denigrating Ukraine and trying to undermine the war effort.”
He explained that the group used the virulent nature of the conspiracies that circulated about the Princess’s health and whereabouts before she announced her cancer diagnosis to further these aims.
“It’s very often they’re not making original posts, but they’re replying to posts that other people have made,” he said. “Obviously they did engage with some of the conspiracies, because they have to build an audience and try and get followers … but the real purpose was to jump on the trending hashtags and use those to push the messages that they wanted.”
More recently, they were also found to be instrumental in the spread of misinformation about the video in which the Princess announced she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy.
The original video, posted to X, has been viewed more than 106 million times, and on TikTok there have been more than 14 billion views on videos about the Princess in just a month. Prof Innes said that his disinformation research programme initially spotted Doppelgänger’s involvement by seeing a number of “suspicious spikes” online in comments talking about Ukraine and Russia under videos or posts about the Princess.
It was discovered that in a single day, 45 different accounts were found to be pushing and repurposing various theories related to the Princess, enough for them to link back to Doppelgänger.
“45 different accounts” you guys. Forty-five Twitter accounts or TikTok users were… piggybacking on the biggest story and spreading disinformation in the comments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this was happening. But the Kate-Gate controversy was not started by Russians nor did Russian hackers propel the story through all of the chaotic twists and turns. It’s certainly on-brand for the British media to declare “it was foreigners” and just end the discussion. Where is the larger discussion about how badly Kensington Palace f–ked up? Where is the discussion about how the British media’s invisible contract with the palace has led them to this utter catastrophe? Also: “on TikTok there have been more than 14 billion views on videos about the Princess in just a month” – that’s because TikTok users have been analyzing the cancer video to figure out if it is AI.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, covers courtesy of The Sun and The Mail.
This is literally Right from the script of Red, White and Royal Blue🤣.. wonder if they were watching for ideas.
I’ve also often wondered if that movie was a what-if about the heir.
Gotta blame someone because they don’t want to blame KP and Peg so let’s blame the Russians. What else will they blame on the Russians?
It’s doubtless true that malign hackers from places that do not wish the western world well are present. They are always present. But…where there is fire, there will be smoke, usually. They piggyback onto existing stories mostly. And, despite the fact that the story has died down, we still have not seen her, since Christmas (I discount the AI cancer video). That fact remains.
Assigning scapegoats is Rule Number One in the BM and the monarchy’s playbook.
KP created a frankenphoto that forced photo agencies to issue a kill order. That’s what caused it. And the reaction was mostly genuine. People were genuinely like what the hell is going on. Did some Russian bots jump on? Sure, but the frankenphoto fueled the conspiracy theories. Not the Russians. 😂
Yes, exactly!
do I think some russian hackers hopped onto some of the conspiracy theories to increase their engagement? Sure. Do I think that’s why the conspiracy theories spread so much and so fast? No. Credible news organizations were wondering where she was. Celebrities were posting about it. It wasn’t just Russian hackers, and it probably wasnt even “mostly” russian hackers.
It’s totally Russian Hackers, y’all.
Absolutely not people like us who started questioning the photo once we became aware of it, Squaddies and adjacents.
And especially not those bad actors at KP who were caught uploading things to socials on Jan 6th 2021, remember?
Or people like Jason Knauf with their multiple accounts with female names (HRH Cate, Cate Fortier), and Maureen Eyers, or Maria Joseph, who were colluding with the major Deranger accounts and the worst of the 🐀🐀🐀 against H&M and the Squad.
What would we do without our Russian hackers? They are soooooooooo reliable, popping up every time some sh.t has hit a fan and there are no plausible takes left for explaining something away. /s
(I do not downplay the true and real danger of hacking worldwide, but you get my gist.)
Yeah they go by the moniker of KP instead of KPG.
Sorry meant KGB – typo all my bad.
@Digital Unicorn: Your typo made me nearly spit my tea all over the monitor. 🙂
The joke came through!
Yes, foreign states like Russia basically troll public discourse to sow discord and division. This was true for the Kaepernick “debate”, this was true for the 2016 election, this is true right now about a million different topics. But that’s what digital communication has devolved into – any corporation, public figure, lobbying group, organization, or even private citizen can seed the internet with mis- or dis-information; tank a competitor, fake viral interest in your product, give yourself a fan. But that’s an entirely separate conversation, and media entities aren’t interested in having it because they’re profiting from this system too.
If The Telegraph is interested in reporting on this, perhaps they’d be better off investigating the troll impact on the Brexit vote. If that’s too difficult maybe they can start with a summary of the British tabloid reporters who use alt accounts to abuse Meghan. Either way, the only trolls responsible for the chaos and conspiracy theories about Kate are the trolls running KP.
Sunday, this is what I immediately thought. Why doesn’t the bm (and US) media write more about the political/economic issues that the Russian hackers hijack? That would actually educate people about what is being done. Instead, they choose the disappearing Princess issue to say something? Sorry, that’s not what people need to be informed about. Bone Idle’s story would still be huge because of all of the plays by KP.
Try again, bm.
The British establishment would rather blame Russian and social media for the conspiracy theories about Kate . Instead of admitting that William was the one who mess this up from the very beginning his Behavior and the lack of transparency over Kate supposed surgery . The British establishment are fine with conspiracy theories when it involves Meghan and Harry and their children The royal reporters gleefully retweet’s and spread the most hateful racist comments about the Sussex’s family . But now all of that is coming back to the white princess it a state of emergencies and the British establishment are trying to clean up William mess by blaming all of legitimate questions of William and Kate as people being mean to them .
They piggybacked on existing hashtag trends and did not create it. No doubt they tried to turn it to their advantage. But they didn’t hide kkkhate for months. They didn’t photoshop her head on to frankenphoto. They didnt send a doppelgänger fake kate at the farm amd make believe it was her. Nope that was all selfmade by KP
This is being pushed by the press to distract from the fact that KP was the cause of this mess and also to serve as protection against questions that may be asked about the conspiracy theories and hate online towards Meghan. There’s no doubt that the hate that Meghan gets was developed and pushed by the British press.
sure, but i think the general population is also to blame. lots of homegrown trolls popped up. there were a lot of nasty stories, speculations, and all sorts of comments people probably regret now that it’s come out she has cancer. all sides had some fault. KP could have handled it better for sure. but people went rabid.