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It has been well documented that Meghan Markle is on the receiving end of a staggering amount of online hate.

Social media toxicity, and media toxicity in general, was a part of why the Duke and Duchess of Sussex moved across the sea to build a life of their own, separate from the British Royal Family.

They’ve done well for themselves, and Meghan has said that she has managed to stay off social media for the most part, for her “own self-preservation”.

According to a new report by Twitter analytic company Bot Sentinel, the couple has been ripped apart on the platform as part of “a coordinated hate and misinformation campaign on Twitter”.

Bot Sentinel is a crowdfunded website and browser plug-in used to analyse Twitter accounts and identify activity that violates the platform’s terms of service.

Of the over 114 000 tweets aimed at the couple that were examined in the report, Meghan copped about 80% of the abuse.

The report identified 83 accounts that are allegedly behind 70% of the more “virulent anti-Sussex tweets,” reported The Guardian:

“Our analysis allowed us to isolate 55 single-purpose accounts we identified as the primary hate accounts and 28 secondary hate accounts that mainly amplified the primary accounts,” the report said.

With the accounts having a total of 187 631 followers, using analytic tools Bot Sentinel estimated “a combined unique potential reach of 17 million users”.

Given the way conservative media outlets have attacked Meghan for literally just existing, it’s not all that surprising to hear that some of these tweets featured coded racist language.

What’s more, the pattern of how the accounts interacted with one another was not “organic”, the report said:

[This suggests] a coordinated effort to amplify harassment of the couple. Most appeared to be generated by humans, Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s chief executive, said.

He told the Washington Post: “We looked for automated accounts and found very little evidence of bot activity.”

At the moment, only four of the 55 primary accounts at the forefront of the report have been suspended by Twitter.

When the report was published, Bouzy mentioned that the hateful activity had dropped a bit.

As for why these trolls are out to get Meghan? Well:

“There’s no motive,” [Bouzy] said, comparing the anti-Meghan campaign with other disinformation and harassment campaigns on Twitter…

“Are these people who hate her? Is it racism? Are they trying to hurt [Harry and Meghan’s] credibility? Your guess is as good as ours.

…“This campaign comes from people who know how to manipulate the algorithms, manipulate Twitter, stay under the wire to avoid detection and suspension. This level of complexity comes from people who know how to do this stuff, who are paid to do this stuff.”

Hmm, people who are paid, you say?

Up to you, then, Twitter, to carry on actively investigating the information and accounts referenced in this report so that interested parties can get to the bottom of this.

[source:guardian]