Meghan Markle And Prince Harry Are The Targets Of Hate Speech And Racism On Twitter

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been the targets of a coordinated, hate-filled Twitter campaign. (photo: Instagram @sussexroyal)

JAKARTA - Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been surprisingly exposed as targets of a coordinated, hate-filled Twitter campaign. In fact, the two of them often become conversations that contain racism.

According to a report from Twitter analytics service Bot Sentinel, which analyzed 114,000 tweets related to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They found that about 70 percent of hate comments about the couple came from 83 accounts.

"Using internal and third-party analytics tools, we estimated the potential combined unique reach of 17,000,000 users. We used friend or follower connections, retweets, and mentions to identify accounts that are part of the same hate network", the report states.

"Our research reveals that these accounts boldly coordinated on the platform, and at least one account openly recruited people to join their hate initiatives, on Twitter", he added.

Launching The Guardian, Thursday, October 28, from the total of these accounts, the analysis of Bot Sentinel found 55 accounts identified as primary hate accounts and 28 secondary hate accounts, most of which strengthened the main account.

One of those accounts is also known to have a total of 187,631 followers and managed to reach 17 million users. Some tweets use racist code language. The pattern of how accounts interact with each other is also not organic, indicating a coordinated effort to amplify the abuse against the couple.

The report also found that Twitter had previously suspended many accounts, but users were implementing tactics to avoid suspension, including placing "parodies" on their profiles.

It said the chief executive of Sentinel Boss, Christopher Bouzy, appeared to be largely human-generated. "We looked for automated accounts and found very little evidence of bot activity", Bouzy told the Washington Post.

“This campaign is coming from people who know how to manipulate algorithms, manipulate Twitter, stay vigilant to avoid detection and suspension. This level of complexity comes from people who know how to do this, who are paid to do this."