Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Internet Hate Machine. As always,
Speaker 1: I am joined by my producer, Sophie. Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 1: It's three? How are you? I can't believe he made
Speaker 1: a girl. It did not seem likely, but alas, we
Speaker 1: did it. I'm proud of us. We did it. But Sophie,
Speaker 1: I have to ask, what is your connection to the royals? Listen?
Speaker 1: Not much except that I really liked Princess Diana when
Speaker 1: I was like in the seventh and the eighth grade,
Speaker 1: super into Princess Diana. And then now it's like you
Speaker 1: have no choice because the Harry and Megan's story is everywhere.
Speaker 1: You cannot scroll. There is no peace. It feels like
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, especially like the Netflix special Harry's memoir Spare Drafts.
Speaker 1: This week, He's speaking to Anderson Cooper in like two
Speaker 1: days too for like an hour long interview thing. I'm
Speaker 1: like my guys out there, so I'm kind of like you,
Speaker 1: Like I am a casual. I have a very casual
Speaker 1: interest in the Royals, and that's why I'm really really
Speaker 1: excited to be joined by Ellie Hall. Ellie It's a
Speaker 1: senior reporter at BuzzFeed and just an overall very cool
Speaker 1: human and she knows so much about the Royals from
Speaker 1: covering them immensely. Ellie, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I remember
Speaker 1: the first we were just talking about this off Mike.
Speaker 1: The first time that I met you in person was
Speaker 1: at a Digital Void event here in d C. And
Speaker 1: I was a little drunk, but I was also like
Speaker 1: mildly star struck. I was like, oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: Ellie Hall. I remember heaping like effusive praise on you
Speaker 1: and your work, to the point where I was like,
Speaker 1: she probably thinks I'm very drunk, but it was very sincere.
Speaker 1: I just sounded like it was. It was drunk talk.
Speaker 1: It was like very sincere talk. To be fair. I
Speaker 1: was a little drunk too, I record, but no, because
Speaker 1: like I were mutuals on Twitter. So I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's you. That's great, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of all the rolpoling that I've done,
Speaker 1: So it was very nice of you. Just generally, how
Speaker 1: did you come to be someone who covered the Royals?
Speaker 1: I didn't really start following it a whole bunch until
Speaker 1: William Kay got married. I feel like that was the
Speaker 1: big sort of thing in two thousand and eleven, that
Speaker 1: was a reset of the Royal family, and we're in
Speaker 1: a new era. So um, I followed it since then
Speaker 1: and when I started at BuzzFeed in and I cannot
Speaker 1: believe I have been there ten years now. Congratulations. First
Speaker 1: of all, a long time. Yeah, it's a long time.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Um. Nobody else care about the Royal family,
Speaker 1: so it was sort of like, who's reporting on the
Speaker 1: Royal family this girl, And it's just sort of I've
Speaker 1: continued reporting on it for all these years since, and
Speaker 1: it's gotten When I said, when you know what I started,
Speaker 1: I had no idea how to even contact the palace
Speaker 1: for comment and stuff like that. And you know, now
Speaker 1: I'm like in, I get the press releases and everything,
Speaker 1: and I know of the spokespeople, but it took a
Speaker 1: while to get to like royal reporter level. I'm sure
Speaker 1: some people listening are like, oh, the Royal family, that's
Speaker 1: just fluff, Like who cares celebrity gossip whatever, But it
Speaker 1: really does tell us a lot about gender, class, race,
Speaker 1: all of these things that are so deeply embedded our
Speaker 1: in our society. I think that coverage of the royal
Speaker 1: family and kind of coverage of the coverage, How is
Speaker 1: the media framing them? What does it tell us? Can
Speaker 1: really say so much about these deeper, thornier issues that
Speaker 1: we all grapple with every day. Oh yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: what makes following the royal family particularly now really interesting
Speaker 1: because you can tell a whole lot about society. Like there,
Speaker 1: so there was this, this just happened. A UK columnist
Speaker 1: named Jeremy Clarkson wrote a column about Megan Markle or
Speaker 1: she's Megan the Duchessess Megan the Duchess's Essex, and he
Speaker 1: was criticizing her because of Harry Megan's recent Netflix show,
Speaker 1: and he said some horrible things. He said like he
Speaker 1: wanted her to walk naked through a screaming crowd and
Speaker 1: have people throwing excrements like the right, that's that guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what he said. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like who was your editor, my dude, Like let that
Speaker 1: get into the paper. Yeah, And watching people watching people
Speaker 1: who defended it saying like oh, it's a Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones reference, and then watching other people be like are
Speaker 1: we on the same page? Here? Happens as appropriate, So
Speaker 1: like watching The reaction to that was really interesting because
Speaker 1: you see the different levels of culture and you can
Speaker 1: in it aligns by class a lot of the time. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Royal family can show us so much about almost
Speaker 1: any issue, including politics, Like that's going to be a
Speaker 1: big one now that Charles is king, because he has
Speaker 1: been politically active all of his life, you know, not
Speaker 1: in not in like I'm gonna go on vote way
Speaker 1: because he can't. But he's advocated for climate change. There
Speaker 1: was a scandal, I think it was in the nineties.
Speaker 1: There was a scandal where papers that he had written,
Speaker 1: they were called the Spider Papers, like he had written
Speaker 1: like two politicians and expressed opinions about political things, and
Speaker 1: they hit the newspapers. So what is his role going
Speaker 1: to be and what's his role with the government gonna be?
Speaker 1: Like is it going to be awkward? Is it not? So? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're going on and on about this, but
Speaker 1: it's classism, racism, xenophobia, all all of these things you
Speaker 1: can see and through the lens of the Royal family,
Speaker 1: And that is honestly exactly what I want to be
Speaker 1: talking about in this episode. Megan Markel and the gendered,
Speaker 1: racialized hate harassment and disinformation campaigns that we know surround her.
Speaker 1: And again, it's not really about Megan Markle. To me,
Speaker 1: it's really about how easy it is for a relatively
Speaker 1: small number of people. Um. I would usually call them
Speaker 1: bad actors, but somebody left a review on the podcast
Speaker 1: saying that this podcast could be a drinking game every
Speaker 1: time I used the term bad actors, and that reviewer
Speaker 1: was correct. I do say it a lot. It's like
Speaker 1: you would be are you would be blackout drunk if
Speaker 1: you took a shot every time I say it, But
Speaker 1: it's just because it's like the term that we use
Speaker 1: this information. But these people are able to completely hijack
Speaker 1: the conversation around this specific person. And like, as someone
Speaker 1: who is just a casual observer of the royals, like
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not a hyper focused person who was
Speaker 1: like obsessed with them. You know, I liked it when
Speaker 1: Megan Merkele was introduced, Like I like the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: black princess, even though you know, Duchess not a princess.
Speaker 1: I know, I do think it's a I know, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's still technically technically even if she lost Duchess
Speaker 1: of Sussex her title would be Princess Henry. Oh ship,
Speaker 1: there we go. Yeah, And for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: Henry is Prince Harry. That's his actual name. Um, it's confusing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Princess Henry. Yeah, Prince Prince Henry. Princess Henry would be
Speaker 1: her name, black princess. There we go. Uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's really it's a great sample of the
Speaker 1: way that these the small dedicated number of people is
Speaker 1: able to completely dominate and hijack the conversation and traffic
Speaker 1: in racism, sexism and have that be like a relatively
Speaker 1: lucrative enterprise, right, and then we see this sort of
Speaker 1: like take off with different targets. And so I've actually
Speaker 1: heard that's referred to as an anti fandom, which I
Speaker 1: had never heard before doing the research for this episode.
Speaker 1: But I think like exactly what you think of it as, right,
Speaker 1: like people who are really really dedicated the same way
Speaker 1: that a fandom is, but in the opposite direction, and
Speaker 1: anti fandom, they are really really dedicated to hating a
Speaker 1: single person. Can I Can I jump in right quick
Speaker 1: and saying please, I see that article. It's a Refinery article.
Speaker 1: You really, everybody if this makes it into the podcast.
Speaker 1: You really should read it. It's one of the best
Speaker 1: pieces about the anti Meg and Markle uh just sort
Speaker 1: of campaign on the internet out there. It's great piece. Well,
Speaker 1: definitely link in the show notes it really it really
Speaker 1: kind of opened my eyes to the way that this
Speaker 1: is not just people. Like everybody has a celebrity or
Speaker 1: someone that they don't like that like rubs them the
Speaker 1: wrong way, not everybody dedicates so much of their time,
Speaker 1: energy and effort into their hatred of that person, bonding,
Speaker 1: like forming these social bonds through that hatred of other people,
Speaker 1: coordinating with other people who hate that person. Like there's
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference between you know, I don't really
Speaker 1: care for such and such and the level of dedicated
Speaker 1: commitment that this anti fandom has to hating this one person.
Speaker 1: Like that article really makes it clear what we're dealing with,
Speaker 1: So will definitely link it in the show notes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not so. The thing that is a little
Speaker 1: weird about this is some of these people are only
Speaker 1: they're only paying lip service to being Reyal Family fans.
Speaker 1: Like there are some people who like I call them
Speaker 1: royalist accounts Sussex people who do not like the Royal
Speaker 1: Family called him derangers. Like there's some people who really
Speaker 1: like the Royal family and will make I would say,
Speaker 1: like reasonable criticism of Harry and Megan. But then there
Speaker 1: are some of these anti Megan accounts don't care about
Speaker 1: the Royal family. They just they just care about trashing Megan.
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe they'll post a picture of the Queen
Speaker 1: um a few times, you know, a picture from our funeral,
Speaker 1: but their main thing is posting negative stuff about Megan,
Speaker 1: which is weird. It's so weird, and I think it
Speaker 1: really a points something else out that I'm always saying
Speaker 1: on this show, which is that you talked about how
Speaker 1: some people maybe are interested in, you know, reasonable criticism
Speaker 1: or conversation about the Royals, but that when when you
Speaker 1: have these hate campaigns, the people who are interested in thoughtful,
Speaker 1: reasonable criticism and conversation are completely drowned out, and you
Speaker 1: have these people who like don't even really care about
Speaker 1: the Royals dominating the conversation, who are only interested in
Speaker 1: traffic again, hate, like that's what they're interested in. So
Speaker 1: that I that's that's really really funny you said that, um,
Speaker 1: because that that's my line. And for a while there
Speaker 1: was a time when I would interact with some of
Speaker 1: these accounts because, like, my thing is engaging in good faith.
Speaker 1: I believe in good faith journalism. I think that the
Speaker 1: world is better when you can go to somebody who
Speaker 1: disagrees with you and both of you enter into that
Speaker 1: disagreement in good faith, coming from a place of I
Speaker 1: believe one thing, you believe the other. Let's let's try
Speaker 1: to figure out if there's common ground. Not coming from
Speaker 1: a place of I'm never going to change my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm sea lioning, i am, but actually I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I am never ever ever going to even attempt to
Speaker 1: see your point of view. And that's what these people do,
Speaker 1: and hilariously that has gotten me a nickname in the
Speaker 1: anti Megan community. I am hashtag good faith Ellie. First
Speaker 1: of all hot, Second of all hot. Ask someone who
Speaker 1: covers this for a living, what is it like the
Speaker 1: way that people who are so entrenched and so dug
Speaker 1: into like nothing will ever convince me that Megan Markle
Speaker 1: is not a narcissist liar this that what is it
Speaker 1: like to have them personally come after you? Really it's
Speaker 1: reporting the truth and like wanting to amplify good faith
Speaker 1: conversations based in honesty, I'm not gonna lie. When it
Speaker 1: first started getting pretty pretty bad, like my therapist and
Speaker 1: I had to talk about it. But the main thing
Speaker 1: here is that it's not about me. I am an
Speaker 1: extension of how they feel about certain people. Because like
Speaker 1: it's not just uh, you know, you write about Megan
Speaker 1: or oh, you write about the Royal family. It's like
Speaker 1: people genuinely believe or say they believe it, Like I'm
Speaker 1: being paid by Harry and Megan for the work that
Speaker 1: I do, and it's like no buzz BuzzFeed, busky news
Speaker 1: with only people who who write my paychecks. But at
Speaker 1: a certain point, you you do start feeling like you're
Speaker 1: going a little bit insane because you're have you I
Speaker 1: have people in my inbox who are telling me that
Speaker 1: Megan wore a moon bump to fake both of her
Speaker 1: pregnancies and she had a surrogate. I have people, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, saying that she was associated with Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 1: and like she was on Epstein's island, or that she
Speaker 1: was a yacht girl. And these people believe either they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't only believe it, they're posting online so that
Speaker 1: they can get other people to believe it, and you know,
Speaker 1: it feels Trumpian in a way that when all that
Speaker 1: started happening, that was a very it was sort of
Speaker 1: like looking into a mirror of you know, the politics
Speaker 1: side of it instead of the world side of it,
Speaker 1: because you can't reason with some of these people. They
Speaker 1: are they are convinced that it's true. Yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: see the Q and On influence in in in that
Speaker 1: type of rhetoric, in the I'm gonna take something, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna run with it and I'm gonna try to force
Speaker 1: it on people, and then that and and and like
Speaker 1: to something where you say it to somebody who's not
Speaker 1: fully involved with the topic and you say to them
Speaker 1: and they're like, what are you a moon bob? What
Speaker 1: are you talking about? But they believe it. They believe it.
Speaker 1: They really believe it. That's the thing. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that that I'm like, No, they wholeheartedly believe what they're
Speaker 1: saying is true. And the thing that makes it difficult
Speaker 1: and is that that poisons all of the discourse when
Speaker 1: you have that group of people, It poisons all of
Speaker 1: the conversations about the royal family online and this even
Speaker 1: includes within you know, Megan's online supporters who call themselves
Speaker 1: the Sussex Squad because there's so much horrible nous coming
Speaker 1: and an irrational and crazy and conspiracy theory, irrational nous
Speaker 1: coming from the anti Megan's side, their need jerk responses
Speaker 1: to be defensive to everything, and and you know, not
Speaker 1: accept any criticism of Megan. Harry like every you can
Speaker 1: criticize everybody, and even like Megan said this in an
Speaker 1: in uh the interview she did in South Africa, she said,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as the criticism is fair, Harry
Speaker 1: and I don't care about it, but it has to
Speaker 1: be fair. And when you're at a point where certain
Speaker 1: people are defending Megan from allegations that are racist in
Speaker 1: our sexist, you can't have discourse because no one, no
Speaker 1: one's ever gonna no one will ever meet in the
Speaker 1: middle about this because there's just too much nonsense flying
Speaker 1: around the internet and there's so much bad faith. You
Speaker 1: say bad actors, I say bad faith. I can understand
Speaker 1: and have gotten and caught up in it myself. The
Speaker 1: the feeling like you need to take a side to
Speaker 1: defend somebody who is being unfairly attacked against criticisms that
Speaker 1: are nonsense, right Like, I feel it a lot with
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. I'm no big fan of Kamala Harris. I
Speaker 1: don't think that she deserves to be like facing racist,
Speaker 1: sexist swipes or things like that, and so you feel
Speaker 1: like you need to take a side because you see
Speaker 1: somebody being so unfairly attacked that you're like, well, obviously
Speaker 1: I have to defend them. And that's not good discourse.
Speaker 1: That doesn't that doesn't create the conditions for people to
Speaker 1: have actual truth based criticisms. And actually, somebody who didn't
Speaker 1: like Megan Merkle or didn't like Kamala Harris should actually
Speaker 1: want to have a climate where we people can have
Speaker 1: substitutive critical conversations about their issues with that person. Right
Speaker 1: Like when you have a dynamic where one side is
Speaker 1: drumming up false racist, conspiracy theory laden nonsense and another
Speaker 1: side is just like defending them, nobody is actually having
Speaker 1: the like, actual thoughtful conversation based in reality about the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of this person or how they present
Speaker 1: or what they do, and say no, and it's also
Speaker 1: like you attacked me, so I'll attack back if you.
Speaker 1: This is I hate how Twitter sent tells you like
Speaker 1: the things that it thinks you're interested in that are trending.
Speaker 1: But it's helpful for me because I follow royal stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you will see people on SUSI side like amplifying
Speaker 1: rumors about William and Kate. There has long been a uh,
Speaker 1: I'll say conspiracy theory, um, but who really knows. There's
Speaker 1: long been a theory out there that William cheated on Kate,
Speaker 1: and that is like there's there's we haven't seen any
Speaker 1: real evidence of the of this, but like that is
Speaker 1: accepted as truth by the other side. So when you
Speaker 1: have these things that our conspiracy theories and that are
Speaker 1: accepted as truth, it goes both hats and no one,
Speaker 1: Like like we just said, no one can meet in
Speaker 1: the middle, yeah and correct me if I'm wrong? Is
Speaker 1: it Prince Andrew like a known sexual abuser? Like yeah,
Speaker 1: couldn't we all just like join forces and be like,
Speaker 1: let's if we're gonna call anybody something that like like
Speaker 1: as somebody who has you know, covered that side of
Speaker 1: it and like really learned a lot about It's like,
Speaker 1: why is that not the conversation every single day? Why
Speaker 1: is that not the thing that the that the like
Speaker 1: that that is going on. Why do they not why
Speaker 1: do they not care? Why is that not the thing?
Speaker 1: Why are they focusing on this this this woman from
Speaker 1: l A who wears tall uggs, Like why do they
Speaker 1: give a fuck? Like that's the thing that blows my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you have somebody who was involved with Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: who is a prince. Ellie helped me. So as far
Speaker 1: as far as that goes, I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: one part of it off the bat that um everyone
Speaker 1: would say is just that like he's done, especially since
Speaker 1: Charles is came now like he is done. Um he
Speaker 1: for some reason, he still had an office in Buckingham
Speaker 1: Palace for the past few years. As soon as the
Speaker 1: Queen died, Charles shut that ship down. It's you know,
Speaker 1: so it's it's very clear, like he's never gonna come
Speaker 1: back to public life and he's just going to be
Speaker 1: a family member for the rest of his life. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a closed book now for some
Speaker 1: people because like what else are you're gonna do? Like
Speaker 1: there's there are no there are no new lawsuits coming forth.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the comparisons that start happening because
Speaker 1: you look at Harry and you look at Andrew. They
Speaker 1: both stepped back to public life for two very different reasons.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that I'm not in this episode.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make anyone feel any kind of
Speaker 1: way about Megan and Harry. Right. People can think whenever
Speaker 1: they want to think about them, Totally fine. But there's
Speaker 1: a very clear difference in being like, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: care for her podcast or whatever, and a engaging in
Speaker 1: a sophisticated, coordinated disinformation campaign against her that it really
Speaker 1: traffics in the sexist, racist stereotypes and conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: profiting off of it. So I want to get into
Speaker 1: a little bit about how we know that this these
Speaker 1: campaigns work, which I know we saw a little bit
Speaker 1: of on their recent Netflix documentary. Yeah, Bridget, I do
Speaker 1: you remember like in I think it was in December
Speaker 1: where I text you and I was like I was like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we have to talk about this, and they're like,
Speaker 1: do I have to watch it? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, I was, it seems like really boring,
Speaker 1: And I was like, there's an entire episode that focuses
Speaker 1: on like single use hate accounts and like goes into
Speaker 1: the targeted and like that side of it, Like they
Speaker 1: could have done an entire series on that. Like everything
Speaker 1: everything else is not relevant really to this podcast, but
Speaker 1: that thing. I have said this publicly yet so that
Speaker 1: you guys will you know, don't don't breaking breaking a
Speaker 1: little news if this makes if this makes it in,
Speaker 1: I feel like they won't kill me. UM. I was
Speaker 1: interviewed for the documentary and didn't make it into the
Speaker 1: final cut. What what? What was your spicy commentary? Tell
Speaker 1: us it was the only reason I'm saying this was
Speaker 1: because it was about this. It was about this, this
Speaker 1: sort of internet thing. So I was, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: That was last February, UM, And I didn't know it
Speaker 1: was for their documentary until like October. So I know
Speaker 1: that you've done a lot of great coverage on Christopher
Speaker 1: Boozy's report. If you don't know who Christopher Boozy is,
Speaker 1: he runs Bought Sentinel, which is an organization that analyzes
Speaker 1: Twitter data, and his analysis shows that a lot of
Speaker 1: this hate that's been thrown at Megan has been driven
Speaker 1: by I would say a lot you were accounts than
Speaker 1: folks might suspect. In fact, just a few accounts have
Speaker 1: been able to artificially influence the conversation around Megan on
Speaker 1: social media. He found that only eighty three accounts generate
Speaker 1: seventy of Megan Markle hate content on Twitter, and they
Speaker 1: estimate that a combined they have a combined unique potential
Speaker 1: reach of seventeen million users, which again, like to me,
Speaker 1: that only a handful of accounts would be able to
Speaker 1: so effectively dominate and shape the conversation about one person
Speaker 1: is kind of wild to me. This is probably like
Speaker 1: one of the it's one of the few day driven
Speaker 1: stories that I've reported on in my career, but the
Speaker 1: numbers shocked me. So what happened here was I had
Speaker 1: been following Bought Sentinel for a while because um, I've
Speaker 1: done misinformation reporting and my I know some of my
Speaker 1: colleagues had quoted from them before, for for about a
Speaker 1: climate change story or something like that. So like Christopher
Speaker 1: Boozy and Boston and all known in the misinformation industry,
Speaker 1: and he tweeted something about I can't even remember what
Speaker 1: it was. He made some comment about Megan and Harry,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden his replies were swarmed with
Speaker 1: these people. Because that's what happens if you say something
Speaker 1: nice about Megan and Harry. At some point, people will
Speaker 1: come and start swarming your replies, particularly if you're verified
Speaker 1: at cat out and it got nasty, like somebody made
Speaker 1: some comment about his mother who had died of COVID.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, and you know because of that,
Speaker 1: He's like, what's going on here? Like what is this? This?
Speaker 1: Who are these people who have all of a sudden
Speaker 1: started coming for me? I'm going to look into them.
Speaker 1: So he ran hashtag analysis, well, he in Boughton all
Speaker 1: ran the hashtag analyzes with uh different I could pull
Speaker 1: it up, but I don't know where it is on
Speaker 1: my computer, with different um like hashtags and words in there,
Speaker 1: looking for all of the tweets about Harry and Megan
Speaker 1: that you know, in one period of time. And then
Speaker 1: they went through those numbers and started looking at the
Speaker 1: accounts that tweeted the most, the accounts that were the
Speaker 1: most influential, like uh, he sent all of the data
Speaker 1: to me so that I could check it myself, and
Speaker 1: our data reporters looked at and they're like, yeah, that's cool,
Speaker 1: this is this is obviously legit. But um, part of
Speaker 1: if you're active on Royal Twitter, you start seeing the
Speaker 1: same accounts in your mentions. For me, I see them
Speaker 1: and that I mute them. And I had always suspected
Speaker 1: that there were there were people who were very, very
Speaker 1: active and basically like doing this with all of their
Speaker 1: free time, but seeing that small number was really shocking
Speaker 1: to me. And I remember a Royal commentator who I
Speaker 1: actually I respect her a whole bunch. I don't agree
Speaker 1: with her all the time, but I really respect her.
Speaker 1: She's a pr person who does really good analysis of
Speaker 1: Harry and Megan and the Royal family from her point
Speaker 1: of view in media relations. But she said, like, why
Speaker 1: is this a big deal? You'll always find haters for
Speaker 1: for people online, And it was like, the big deal
Speaker 1: is because that's not organic. You can't just say that
Speaker 1: there are all these people on Twitter who hate Megan
Speaker 1: Harry And yeah, I'm sure I follow some people who
Speaker 1: don't like Megan and Harry, who you know are our
Speaker 1: other reporters, you know, people in the industry, or you
Speaker 1: know a few people I fall from college are tired
Speaker 1: of Harry and Megan. But they'll do one tweet and
Speaker 1: then they will go back to their lives. Right, They
Speaker 1: will not just keep going with the stream of negativity
Speaker 1: and you know every everything, like peeps, there's there's someone
Speaker 1: who's thing is posting racist cartoons with Megan and Harry
Speaker 1: and perpetuating all of these conspiracy theories and stereotypes and
Speaker 1: just trying to get them out to as many people
Speaker 1: as possible. Like that's the thing I would actually you
Speaker 1: should try this out bridget um as an experiment, like
Speaker 1: tweets something paused about Megan Harry and see what happens
Speaker 1: here mentions because I got it. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's a there's a podcaster. I think what even as
Speaker 1: Kate Kennedy, she hosts the podcast be There in five,
Speaker 1: she has this a huge, thriving Facebook community, and that
Speaker 1: she said like I have to go private because I've
Speaker 1: made an episode about Megan and Harry and I know
Speaker 1: that it's going to be bought Botswarm City, and so
Speaker 1: she has to go private when she does that, Like,
Speaker 1: and I think that like something that you said about
Speaker 1: when how they give you cruel nicknames and like are
Speaker 1: shitty to you personally, I think it's a silencing tactic.
Speaker 1: So that like everyone who has something positive or even
Speaker 1: not even positive just accurate to say about about this
Speaker 1: person that they hate will know that doing so will
Speaker 1: come at a personal cost. Like, if you're gonna treat
Speaker 1: something positive about Megan and Harry, is it worth the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that the kind of folks are gonna
Speaker 1: be in your mentions, you know, getting on you for it. Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very clear silencing tactic to shut
Speaker 1: down the discourse that they don't want to happen. So
Speaker 1: two things there. You said that your friend was talking
Speaker 1: about bots. That's the thing. The people here and the
Speaker 1: people who drives, they're not bucks, They're not This isn't
Speaker 1: a situation where some PR firm in Los Angeles or
Speaker 1: London has bought up a bunch of accounts just you
Speaker 1: know to share stories about the royal family or say
Speaker 1: a few things. These are people. These are people who
Speaker 1: devote ton to posting this negative content. Christopher Boozy coined
Speaker 1: the term single purpose hate account for this for this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and I think it's a great phrase
Speaker 1: and it can be applied, you know, in in any
Speaker 1: fandom you see. But like, they're not bots, these are
Speaker 1: actual people. You can really see the silencing aspect um
Speaker 1: in everything that happens to a UK reporter who is
Speaker 1: I would I would call him an internet friends. We've
Speaker 1: met in person a few times. But Omen Scobe he
Speaker 1: wrote the book Finding Freedom, which we now know Harry
Speaker 1: and Megan like told their press person to send him
Speaker 1: information and stuff. So but I I know that other
Speaker 1: Royal reporters, Omen Scoby and a few others have gotten
Speaker 1: death threats, and I've gotten I've gotten death threats. Our
Speaker 1: security team had to check into that for me. But
Speaker 1: people don't want anything to disrupt their narrative and it
Speaker 1: has like it's like nothing to do with you. But
Speaker 1: if you're out there and you are trying to spread
Speaker 1: the truth which is not what they believe, you know,
Speaker 1: it can get dicey. Jesus, should we get into some
Speaker 1: of Christopher Boozy, who who runs the Bots Sentinels research,
Speaker 1: some of the some of that report, you know, the
Speaker 1: ellis covered in a bunch too. The data is really
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. So to break it down, of those
Speaker 1: eight three accounts, they identified fifty five single purpose anti
Speaker 1: Megan marcle hate accounts that he says they sort of
Speaker 1: function as the primary hate accounts, and then twenty eight
Speaker 1: secondary hate accounts that basically amplified anti Megan markle content
Speaker 1: from those earlier fifty five accounts. So basically, once a
Speaker 1: primary account tweets something, those twenty eight secondary accounts would
Speaker 1: then quickly boost that content i e. Coordination and have
Speaker 1: to be clear like, as you said, these are these
Speaker 1: are not bots, these are like real people, and these
Speaker 1: tactics violate Twitter's rules. Twitter has rules against coordination and
Speaker 1: things like that. So how are are they able to
Speaker 1: avoid detection? Well, his report found that things like pairing
Speaker 1: negative comments about Megan and Harry with positive contents about
Speaker 1: other royals and in an attempt to sort of evade detection.
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, we're not a hate account, We're
Speaker 1: just a Royalis account, but it's all going to be
Speaker 1: mostly anti Megan Markel suprinkle in a few other other
Speaker 1: tweets for for plausible deniability, um temporarily deactivating their accounts
Speaker 1: so that they won't be suspended, only to reactivate later,
Speaker 1: which is pretty clever, I would say, putting parity in
Speaker 1: their profiles even though their account like really is not
Speaker 1: a parody account, and then using coded or like coded
Speaker 1: or dog whistle racist and sexist language. And so this
Speaker 1: is something that as someone who has got a lot
Speaker 1: of work in the myths and disinformation space really just
Speaker 1: burns my beans. How people will it's so obvious what
Speaker 1: they're saying, and what the what the like, what the
Speaker 1: what they're trying to say, but they'll thinly veil it
Speaker 1: in a way that you know is meant to avoid
Speaker 1: detection and to have that plausible deniability. So it's like, like,
Speaker 1: what did I say that was racist or sexist? I
Speaker 1: just evoked some really common racist or sexist trope. An
Speaker 1: example of the sort of things that people say that
Speaker 1: that is encoded language but definitely is based in racism.
Speaker 1: Massage Noir is that Megan is a violent person with
Speaker 1: a bad temper, so whenever anything happens that's good, mostly
Speaker 1: like good for William and Kate. You'll see all of
Speaker 1: these tweets and YouTube videos being like Megan must be
Speaker 1: throwing dishes in Monacito, or like we can hear the
Speaker 1: angry screams from that they live in Monatito's, Like we
Speaker 1: can hear the angry screams from Monacito. Now, like Harry
Speaker 1: better duck, Megan's throwing punches because she's so angry, and
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's the angry black woman trope that
Speaker 1: that's not You're not even trying that hard, like barely
Speaker 1: a dog with all. Yeah, so you mentioned Twitter. This
Speaker 1: is the this is the thing, and this is why
Speaker 1: like people who hate Megan Harry always like this report
Speaker 1: is an accurate No, sorry, it is. Twitter has very
Speaker 1: they have their earn standards about what they considered to
Speaker 1: be coordination. And an interesting thing that is in another
Speaker 1: later report done by Bot Sentinel and Christopher Boozy is
Speaker 1: evidence from like the early days of anti Megan Twitter
Speaker 1: where people were organizing in a chat from a program
Speaker 1: called me we, which I had never heard of until
Speaker 1: like all all of the investigation to this started going on.
Speaker 1: But I've spent about like five hours going through their
Speaker 1: archives and you can see people in there talking about
Speaker 1: like I'm going to tweet this or oh, Paris Hilton
Speaker 1: retweeted me guys, let's try to get this hashtag trending.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure they haven't a new way that's not
Speaker 1: me we that U that they know use now for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But what what you said burns
Speaker 1: my beans? I like that phrase. What what what really
Speaker 1: burns my beans about? Twitter's response to this was they
Speaker 1: put out a statement like we only got rid of
Speaker 1: like three of the accounts that we saw for violations,
Speaker 1: and then like in the next week, they started just
Speaker 1: shutting all of them down, and they and I asked them, like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I get you save it from you please, because
Speaker 1: you've shut down like ten of these accounts and you
Speaker 1: told other media outlets that our report wasn't correct. So
Speaker 1: that's been super fun. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: accounts they were in, they were labeled in that first report.
Speaker 1: For a while, a lot of them went away, and
Speaker 1: then Elon must bought Twitter and now many of them
Speaker 1: are back again with their same handles, so they basically
Speaker 1: were banned by Twitter. Ellen came brought them back because
Speaker 1: this is this is the kind of discourse that will
Speaker 1: make Twitter a better place, a more thoughtful place, a
Speaker 1: place where it's like I hate that and I think
Speaker 1: like Something that I also want to mention is that
Speaker 1: Twitter's algorithm eventually was amplifying this hateful content. According to
Speaker 1: the report, researchers use Twitter accounts without friends or followers
Speaker 1: during the research, and after viewing two hate accounts, and
Speaker 1: then Twitter's algorithm began suggesting numerous hate accounts for them
Speaker 1: to follow. On multiple occasions, Twitter recommended that they follow
Speaker 1: these hate accounts. Oh it still it still happens to me,
Speaker 1: Like it still happens to me. I, Um, they're always
Speaker 1: new accounts popping up, but I don't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to block because then it gives people the satisfaction of
Speaker 1: knowing that they've been blocked me. So, yeah, I'm mute.
Speaker 1: But if a new account pops up in my mentions,
Speaker 1: like trashing on me, and I'll look at it, I'll go, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I'm muting you. It will recommend to me
Speaker 1: to follow other accounts of people who are attacking me
Speaker 1: and my mentions. And it's like that the algorithm shouldn't
Speaker 1: work that way. You shouldn't try to be encouraging abuse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that it's like what you said about
Speaker 1: Twitter do like getting rid of those accounts quietly, like
Speaker 1: denying your report publicly and then quietly being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: actually this is a problem. We need to do something.
Speaker 1: I think it really speaks to I don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess sometimes I I don't want to use the term
Speaker 1: bad actor, but sometimes I think that the people running
Speaker 1: platforms are not running platforms in a way that I
Speaker 1: think encourages It's not responsible, Like that's not like somebody
Speaker 1: who was interested in having a platform that foster's thoughtful
Speaker 1: conversation and discourse would not behave that way. I'll put
Speaker 1: it that way. Yeah, yeah, no, And uh, Twitter is
Speaker 1: definitely the platform where I don't like to use the
Speaker 1: word powerful, but Twitter is definitely the platform where these
Speaker 1: accounts and uh, you know the crazy anti Harry and
Speaker 1: Megan people have these power because and this was this
Speaker 1: was another publication by Bought Sentinel looking at these accounts.
Speaker 1: What that looked at was official. I say official, but
Speaker 1: like this means they write for a paper, they get
Speaker 1: on TV as royal commentators, like royal reporters and commentators,
Speaker 1: some of them interact with these accounts. But what's more,
Speaker 1: some of these accounts purposefully target these people and and
Speaker 1: you know, like one of I remember when when this
Speaker 1: came out, like one of the ladies who was listed
Speaker 1: in it was like, what's like, I don't believe these
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. I'm like no, no, no no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: we're not saying that. We're just saying, like, look at
Speaker 1: all the people who are tweeting at you trying to
Speaker 1: get you to believe this thing, and in one particular
Speaker 1: case that that this person is still on the air.
Speaker 1: Her name is Angela Levin. But the report like showed
Speaker 1: with screenshots how a conspiracy theory started on Twitter from
Speaker 1: one of these accounts, and she said it on TV
Speaker 1: like while she was commenting, you know, that's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing if they're all talking to each other on Tumbler,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, not great, but it's at least it's
Speaker 1: insulated on Twitter. Anyone can see it. It It can go
Speaker 1: anywhere and anyone can believe it. I think that's exactly
Speaker 1: why we see Twitter being this battleground for power and
Speaker 1: like quote culture wars and ideology, because so many journalists
Speaker 1: and media makers and editors are on Twitter every day.
Speaker 1: Like we're probably way too fucking much to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, but you can. Really it's like a dedicated
Speaker 1: dedicated people on Twitter can make things into news, and
Speaker 1: we've seen that happen for good with things like Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter and Me Too. But that power for good
Speaker 1: could also be weaponized and used for evil and used
Speaker 1: to legitimize things that are just not true, like harmful
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and it sounds like that's exactly what happened here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it is. The word battleground is is
Speaker 1: definitely what it is because there are two very distinct,
Speaker 1: separate sides, and everyone is trying to control the narrative,
Speaker 1: control the hashtags. And I, you know, since I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time in that Twitter world because of
Speaker 1: my reporting, it's always funny to me when it breaks
Speaker 1: out and like, real people are seeing these things. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many of my colleagues have read
Speaker 1: some of my stories about all this and they've just
Speaker 1: gone like, Ellie, how's this real? Like how do people
Speaker 1: care this much? Like what what is? What's what's going
Speaker 1: on here? And I have no answer for them because
Speaker 1: I've been in the world too much that like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it. It makes sense that Megan Markle's has sister,
Speaker 1: Samantha Markle, is engaging with these Twitter accounts and she's
Speaker 1: been feeding information to the worst anti Megan YouTube channel
Speaker 1: for years. You know, everyone knows this. I've just you know,
Speaker 1: I finally laid it all out and then the story
Speaker 1: goes up and people are like, this is bat shit insane.
Speaker 1: I know, it's one of those things where when I
Speaker 1: talk about it, the reality of what's happening, I feel
Speaker 1: like I sound like um Charlie from Always Sunday, Like
Speaker 1: the corkboard, like there is no pepe st Like how
Speaker 1: deep this thing goes, how coordinated it is. It is
Speaker 1: people who are not as online as we probably are.
Speaker 1: It would it would sound like the rantings of somebody
Speaker 1: who is not well, but it's true. Can I tell
Speaker 1: you things I was interviewed for. I was interviewed on
Speaker 1: the BBC this second like, because Harry Megan's definitely stually
Speaker 1: dropped in two parts. They had like one part one
Speaker 1: week and then another part of the second week second
Speaker 1: week of BBC World reached out and there like, can
Speaker 1: we interview you get an American perspective on Harry Megan?
Speaker 1: Because I woke up at two thirty so I could
Speaker 1: watch it when I came out, so I was ready
Speaker 1: and rare in to go if anybody wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me. And my mom wanted to see it, so
Speaker 1: she went to YouTube and search my name, and you
Speaker 1: know what happens. If you search my name, you see
Speaker 1: videos from these people. You see videos attacking you, attacking me,
Speaker 1: And she was she was. She called me. She's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was this bad. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that there are people who care this much that they're
Speaker 1: making YouTube videos attacking you. So my mom's eyes were
Speaker 1: open to this world recently. I'm so sorry. And you're
Speaker 1: just doing your job. It's not like it's not like
Speaker 1: you're just doing your job. Yeah, but um, as any
Speaker 1: royal reporter will tell you, it's not this is part
Speaker 1: of the job. Now it's become so fierce, it's become
Speaker 1: so divided that if you write about the royal family
Speaker 1: like this is what you are getting yourself into. Now
Speaker 1: do you see this as a relatively new phenomenon Like
Speaker 1: when Trump got into office. I do think that conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories and this kind of dedicated online disinformation and harassment
Speaker 1: campaigns became much more commonplace and our discourse. Do you
Speaker 1: see this as a new phenomenon where being a royal
Speaker 1: reporter in the nineties, death threats and hate videos about
Speaker 1: yourself perhaps would not have been part of the job
Speaker 1: the same way it is now. So no one can
Speaker 1: believe me when I say this, but Royal Twitter used
Speaker 1: to be a kind of weird but overall nice place
Speaker 1: this was back in I remember, because I started I
Speaker 1: first got into Royal Twitter when Prince George was born,
Speaker 1: and you know, there there would be some some people
Speaker 1: wouldn't like Kate Middleton. There have always been people who
Speaker 1: don't like her, and you know that that's cool, you
Speaker 1: do you, but there wouldn't be this overwhelming tide of negativity.
Speaker 1: I never saw any accounts that their sole purpose was
Speaker 1: to dinner grate Kate. I saw a few people say
Speaker 1: somethings about her, but nothing, you know, nothing like what
Speaker 1: you see for Megan. And it stayed that way for
Speaker 1: a long time. And honestly, it was when Megan entered
Speaker 1: the scene that this became more and more and more divisive.
Speaker 1: And I said this when we were talking earlier Bridget,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, some of these accounts started posting
Speaker 1: anti Megan stuff before the wedding, like the seeds were
Speaker 1: there and they were so, you know, before Megan had
Speaker 1: really even entered the public life, the public sphere. In
Speaker 1: those early days of her being on the scene, so
Speaker 1: much of it was kind of reaching like, oh, she's
Speaker 1: an actor, that means that she is a phony or
Speaker 1: a narcissist, like some of them were really really reaching
Speaker 1: just to have a reason to hate this person that
Speaker 1: we really didn't even know that much about yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously a lot of it was racialized. You know,
Speaker 1: we we had everyone knows is we had the Daily
Speaker 1: Mail headline of Harry's girls straight out of Compton. We
Speaker 1: had we had a columnist writing about her exotic d NA,
Speaker 1: just a lot lots of stuff like that, And Prince
Speaker 1: Harry even issued a statement about that, saying that like
Speaker 1: the racist abused on social media and the racist like
Speaker 1: vibes is the wrong word, but like the the undertones
Speaker 1: of some of the coverage, like every we all, we
Speaker 1: all need to stop that it does seem very racialized.
Speaker 1: That like as Suon as she came on the scene,
Speaker 1: people were really reaching to find any reason to hate her.
Speaker 1: And I think to your point about how it's so
Speaker 1: racially coded, that's one of the things that I really
Speaker 1: struggle with because you know, you just know, like that
Speaker 1: headline straight out of Compton, or when she was pregnant, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what what's archie skin tone gonna be? Like? Sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: as a black woman, you know when someone is saying
Speaker 1: something that is racialized, they might not be there. They
Speaker 1: might not be coming out and calling you a slur
Speaker 1: or like you know, doing it in such an explicit way,
Speaker 1: but you can you can feel when someone is trafficking
Speaker 1: in massage, noir or racism against you. And I think
Speaker 1: what's hard is that we have been so trained as
Speaker 1: a society to not talk about it openly, to ignore
Speaker 1: it and not speak up about it, and so you
Speaker 1: just have to kind of I think it creates a
Speaker 1: climate where it becomes normalized at normalized as discourse, as
Speaker 1: legitimate discourse when it really shouldn't be. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you can Megan, Megan marrying into the royal family and
Speaker 1: everything that happened afterwards really prompted I think a can
Speaker 1: we say long overdue but to a discussion about race
Speaker 1: in in the UK in particular, but also just across
Speaker 1: the board, because you know, what is the difference between
Speaker 1: two women who married into the royal family. You have
Speaker 1: Megan and you have Kate, and you in many cases
Speaker 1: just like don't even look at their behavior. Just look
Speaker 1: at what they're wearing or you know that that that
Speaker 1: they're pregnant, and you will see, you know, these these
Speaker 1: little differences that don't make sense. You wrote that that
Speaker 1: viral piece about the like comparing the way that the
Speaker 1: press covers when Megan does something and when another royal
Speaker 1: does the exact same thing, like holding hands, for instance,
Speaker 1: in public, when Megan and Harry held hands, people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, they can't even keep their hands off
Speaker 1: of each other. It's disgusting, it's so disrespectful this and that,
Speaker 1: and then another royal doing the exact same thing, and
Speaker 1: it gives and and not having that kind of corporage.
Speaker 1: It's just like, Okay, they're holding hands, and it makes
Speaker 1: it clear that this kind of hyper focus that Megan
Speaker 1: is under right, that it's just only seemingly reserved for her.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like, as I said, as a person of color,
Speaker 1: I know that when that kind of extra scrutiny on
Speaker 1: every little thing, every little move you make, is reserved
Speaker 1: just for you. You know, it's racialized. You couldn't feel it.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to talk about it openly, but you
Speaker 1: know it, and they're not talking about it openly and
Speaker 1: not talking about it publicly, Like that's been the real
Speaker 1: thing because you have all of these people, um, you know,
Speaker 1: all these people online, people who recognize what's going on,
Speaker 1: like you Bridget and you're talking to a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: and in this case a lot of people in the
Speaker 1: media who are writing these headlines and are talking to
Speaker 1: these people in the palace and perpet you know, getting
Speaker 1: these headlines and getting these stories out. They they don't
Speaker 1: see it. And not only that people who write the headlines,
Speaker 1: but the people who are making decisions at tech platforms
Speaker 1: like Twitter and YouTube. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: know that you have reported on that still just kind
Speaker 1: of blows my mind is that we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about Twitter in this episode. But but TEMs it will
Speaker 1: also looked at YouTube accounts and found that this is
Speaker 1: big business, right. Trashing Megan Markle and lying about her
Speaker 1: is lucrative. They found that twenty five YouTube channels earned
Speaker 1: around three point five million from ad revenue according to
Speaker 1: Data Analysis Agency, and that three of the most successful
Speaker 1: anti Megan marco had accounts generated almost half a million
Speaker 1: dollars during their existence. And basically they just filmed these
Speaker 1: low quality racist videos full of inaccuracies and baseless conspiracies
Speaker 1: about how she you know, faked her pregnancy or used
Speaker 1: a bait, a moon bump or whatever to like fake
Speaker 1: our pregnancy. What does it tell you about our media
Speaker 1: ecosystem that you can make half a million dollars just
Speaker 1: spreading low quality, not even high quality sophisticated racist lives,
Speaker 1: but low quality racist lies about one person. I mean,
Speaker 1: so we saw and obviously this is a very very
Speaker 1: different case, but we saw with Johnny Depp and an
Speaker 1: Amber Heard how content you know, either micro analyzing Amber
Speaker 1: Heard and trashing her like and this is like, we
Speaker 1: can just let's keep this a judgment free zone. Like
Speaker 1: there weren't videos looking at what Johnny said that went viral.
Speaker 1: There weren't people like analyzing his test videos where people
Speaker 1: were analyzing his testimony that went viral. It was Amber
Speaker 1: like on TikTok, on YouTube videos attacking her, making fun
Speaker 1: of her. They did really, really well. And the thing
Speaker 1: with Megan is that you know, and obviously similar to Amber,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to YouTube videos about Megan, there
Speaker 1: is an audience. And that's that's the thing that was
Speaker 1: crazy to me when I first started looking into this,
Speaker 1: because I actually, well, the biggest YouTube account that had
Speaker 1: been around for a long time, Yankee Wally, was a
Speaker 1: Welsh pensioner who literally would pull up her phone and
Speaker 1: talk to her phone and scroll through and like find
Speaker 1: pictures and and talk about that and then upload everything.
Speaker 1: For years, she was spreading these conspiracy theories. She was
Speaker 1: attacking the Royal family, attacking Harry and Megan and making money,
Speaker 1: like making serious money. Like she she is come back
Speaker 1: online and like she's very unhappy that her YouTube channel
Speaker 1: is no more. It got it got shut down. But
Speaker 1: the funny thing was, I believe it didn't get shut
Speaker 1: down because of anything she said about Harry and Megan.
Speaker 1: Thanks to YouTube's rules. I believe the reason it got
Speaker 1: shut down was because of attacks she made on open Scope,
Speaker 1: the reporter that I mentioned earlier. Because and this is
Speaker 1: this is why YouTube kid get away with it. YouTube
Speaker 1: is very specific rules about what counts is harassment and
Speaker 1: what counts is hate speech. If you in order for
Speaker 1: it to count as that, in order for it to
Speaker 1: you know, get you either kicked off or get your
Speaker 1: videos taken down, you need to attack an intrinsic attribute
Speaker 1: of someone. So like there are there is a specific
Speaker 1: there are specific things that you have to attack. And
Speaker 1: if you attack anything else, okay, that's fine, like or
Speaker 1: or you spread conspiracy theories, that's fine. So some of
Speaker 1: these are like race, gender, sexual orientation, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it is racialized. But it's not someone saying out loud,
Speaker 1: you know Megan, we don't like Megan because she's black.
Speaker 1: It is Megan is super angry, or Megan is classless,
Speaker 1: you know, Megan is Magan is very low class or
Speaker 1: I've heard. You haven't lived until you've heard, you know,
Speaker 1: like a British person say Ratchett to describe Megan like.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know they had that word in the UK. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The commentary to in terms of her dad online has
Speaker 1: been yeah, it's it's it's deeply disturbing to me. One
Speaker 1: of the things I learned from watching the Netflix thing,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that she had like a good relationship
Speaker 1: with her dad before all this happened. I just I
Speaker 1: didn't think. I mean, I guess I didn't look into
Speaker 1: it hard enf but I didn't realize until I watched
Speaker 1: this documentary that it's like, no, they had like a
Speaker 1: really good relationship when she was growing up. They had
Speaker 1: a good relationship up until he was approached by the press. Yes,
Speaker 1: l to Philip. Philip said, I can answer that because
Speaker 1: I wrote a big story about this so specifically they
Speaker 1: had they were talking to each other, had a good relationship.
Speaker 1: He even talked to Harry on the phone after they
Speaker 1: were engaged, and everything was good until a paparazzi photographer
Speaker 1: approached him at his home in Mexico is like little
Speaker 1: little house he was living in a Mexico and said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't I take some photos of you getting ready
Speaker 1: for the wedding that we can get out there because
Speaker 1: there had been a lot of bad press about you know,
Speaker 1: so what happens when anybody famous pops up, they go
Speaker 1: look at your family. They're gonna find absolutely everything, any
Speaker 1: black sheep and and all this stuff. So the photographer
Speaker 1: kind of convinced him to get some good press. So
Speaker 1: these photos were published, like him being measured for a suit,
Speaker 1: or him looking at a picture of Harry and Megan
Speaker 1: on a computer and just stuff like that. In the documentary, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, and those photos when were like, I people
Speaker 1: don't talk to me about before doing royal stuff on BuzzFeed,
Speaker 1: but I really wish they would, Like bus needed a
Speaker 1: story about that, like featuring those photos and if you
Speaker 1: people accepted as legit. And then the week before the wedding,
Speaker 1: the Mail on Sunday, which is British media is so weird.
Speaker 1: So there's a Daily Mail. The Sunday edition is a
Speaker 1: completely different staff, like the Mail on Sunday is different
Speaker 1: from the Daily Mail, and it's a little more it's
Speaker 1: a little more prestigious. But right before the wedding, the
Speaker 1: Mail on Sunday published a story showing that Thomas Markle
Speaker 1: had been working with the paparazzi, and I believe it
Speaker 1: alluded that he had shared the profits the paparazzi and
Speaker 1: Thomas Markel had split the profits for that. That was
Speaker 1: where the relationship broke down, but it didn't even like
Speaker 1: completely breakdown. Then Megan and Harry were still trying to
Speaker 1: get him over for the wedding, and then he had
Speaker 1: a heart attack and he said confusing things about that period,
Speaker 1: so like no one was it a heart attack? Was
Speaker 1: he too embarrassed to go? Was it a little bit
Speaker 1: of both? Maybe? Um, But the fact he lied to
Speaker 1: Megan initially about collaborating with the paparazzi destroyed their relationship.
Speaker 1: But before that they like they were good, they were close.
Speaker 1: Megan used to have a lifestyle blog called The Tig
Speaker 1: and she she She's wrote like very beautiful Father's Day
Speaker 1: posts about him and all the support that he'd given
Speaker 1: her throughout his life, and even with you know, her
Speaker 1: half sister smant the Markle. That's something that she says
Speaker 1: all the time when someone puts a microphone in her face,
Speaker 1: that like, Megan was their father's favorite, she was his
Speaker 1: little baby. And watching the public, watching the public narrative
Speaker 1: about this, you know when it comes Tomas Markel, if
Speaker 1: you like Megan and Harry, you're like, no, this is
Speaker 1: classic abusive behavior. Like you are speaking to the media
Speaker 1: and you are saying all of this because you want
Speaker 1: attention from the person. You want money acknowledged and money.
Speaker 1: But everybody else is like, how dare Megan a band?
Speaker 1: And her father likes he's so ill, he just had
Speaker 1: a stroke, he hasn't met his grandchildren. And you know,
Speaker 1: you don't see any of the logical reasons why she
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do this based on whether or not
Speaker 1: you like Harry or Megan, And that's what most of
Speaker 1: it comes down to. And I also think, like I
Speaker 1: think that for people of color, women of color, I
Speaker 1: think the subtext is that we are not allowed to
Speaker 1: have complex relationships with our families. Even though every family
Speaker 1: is complicated. People have complicated relationships, like layered complicated, complex
Speaker 1: relationships with their parents all the time. That is commonplace.
Speaker 1: But when Megan has it, it's something you know, she
Speaker 1: abandoned her dad this and that. Like you know, as
Speaker 1: I said, I don't really follow the royals that closely.
Speaker 1: I dip into the news here and there. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a good example of how they target
Speaker 1: people who are perhaps low information on the issue, you know,
Speaker 1: casual observers, to effectively create a narrative because I assumed
Speaker 1: that that media narrative that we hear is correct. You
Speaker 1: know that Megan cut off her poor sick father, But
Speaker 1: had I read your reporting a little more closely, I
Speaker 1: would know that's not really the case. And I think
Speaker 1: this is really meant to target folks who are just
Speaker 1: casual observers because they know that they can get those
Speaker 1: folks to believe something about Megan Markle that just isn't true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that you see not done so much anymore.
Speaker 1: But like Thomas Markele has made appearances on uk TV,
Speaker 1: like he he was interviewed by Pierce Morgan more than
Speaker 1: once that I don't even don't even get me started. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: sorry for bringing up that name, but yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know that's Morning TV. And if you you're you are
Speaker 1: taking this person who is obviously a toxic figure in
Speaker 1: Megan's life and and let's just use the word problematic
Speaker 1: and amplifying everything that he's saying. Well, some people who
Speaker 1: don't follow the world is very you know that closely,
Speaker 1: that's the narrative they're going to start believing instead of
Speaker 1: looking to see like, well, wait, what did he do?
Speaker 1: Like there has to be a reason here, right, there
Speaker 1: are valid reasons to not like Harry and Megan. But no,
Speaker 1: and that's like we're not talking about that in this
Speaker 1: podcast because that's such as minority of people who behave rationally.
Speaker 1: But anyway to think that that came out here was
Speaker 1: that her press secretary at the time had coordinated with
Speaker 1: the authors of the book Finding Freedom to give information
Speaker 1: to him. Like Harry and Megan knew that their press
Speaker 1: person was going to go talk to the reporters who
Speaker 1: are writing this long book, and everyone always knew that,
Speaker 1: like Finding Freedom was going to be Harry and Megan's
Speaker 1: side of the story. But no one, I think ever
Speaker 1: expected to see how how much of their their hands
Speaker 1: weren't like that there were emails exchanged about what to
Speaker 1: tell these reporters. So Megan ended up like basically apologizing
Speaker 1: to the court saying, like, I completely forgot about this
Speaker 1: one email exchange. And if you saw in the documentary,
Speaker 1: you know, you know that part of the documentary where
Speaker 1: Megan goes, he's your brother. That that's that's that's this,
Speaker 1: that's what they're talking about. Because the press person who
Speaker 1: submitted during the appeal, the press person, former press person
Speaker 1: for Harry and Megan, gave them like all these emails,
Speaker 1: gave the daily emails, gave the court, let's just say,
Speaker 1: gave the court. Gave the court all of these emails.
Speaker 1: And um, you see the fall from that in the
Speaker 1: documentary because Harry and Megan are talking and they're talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that their former press person you know,
Speaker 1: is like currently working for William and that's your brother. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was like Megan's her most authentic moment in the
Speaker 1: documentary for me, just like very obviously not in front
Speaker 1: of the cameras, just like having having a movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think you know, your point is such a
Speaker 1: good one. Of like, I think that people can have
Speaker 1: people can have legitimate criticisms or takes or opinions about
Speaker 1: the coordination that they that their team had with this book.
Speaker 1: But so like when you said, oh, there's all these
Speaker 1: legitimate reasons to dislike them, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I could not even begin to talk about
Speaker 1: like what those are, like, I don't know because of
Speaker 1: what I what dominates the conversation are the conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: the lies, the racism, the nonsense, And it just creates
Speaker 1: this dynamic where we don't actually get to have the
Speaker 1: conversation that we perhaps should. It's just wanted with ridiculous stuff.
Speaker 1: Laney Gossip Lane Louis. She has a blog called Laney Sip.
Speaker 1: She made an excellent point when um, the edition of
Speaker 1: Vogue that Megan guests edited came out that I think about.
Speaker 1: I think about her point all the time. She said, like,
Speaker 1: we could talk about the fact that Megan is using
Speaker 1: really flowery language, and like some of the stuff you're
Speaker 1: saying about I think it's like a Children of the
Speaker 1: Moon or something. She was using what we considered to
Speaker 1: be like hippie California language. Laney said, you know, I
Speaker 1: would love to talk about this, like, but you can't
Speaker 1: because of all of the racist, sexist, xenophobic stuff that's
Speaker 1: dominating the conversation. Like there there's no room for you know,
Speaker 1: making fun of her gently you for this little thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's by design. It disinformation. It's like
Speaker 1: a classic thing. It sucks. It sucks all the oxygen
Speaker 1: out of the room when it comes to conversations. And
Speaker 1: I would argue, like it shuts down discourse, and so
Speaker 1: everyone's all concerned about free speech this and that, Like
Speaker 1: it creates a climate where people can't talk about what
Speaker 1: they want to talk about because there's no room for it.
Speaker 1: There's no room for it, and you will be dealing
Speaker 1: with people who believe their own version of the truth,
Speaker 1: like I mean, yeah, you compared to Q and on
Speaker 1: earlier in the show. And really that's sort of what
Speaker 1: a large portion of the Royal Internet has become. Like
Speaker 1: there are some people you never be able to convince
Speaker 1: them that you know, Megan was pregnant there despite all
Speaker 1: all of the evidence of the country. There are some
Speaker 1: people who believe that wholeheartedly. And if you say anything
Speaker 1: on the Internet like oh, like look at this picture
Speaker 1: of you know it doesn't. This picture Megan's bump that
Speaker 1: she showed in the documentary look cute. They will all
Speaker 1: jump in and but actually you and say no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: she she she thinked it's a moon bump, like the
Speaker 1: idea of like what is the true royal story? No
Speaker 1: one can agree on it anymore. And Ellie, you were
Speaker 1: telling me how a lot of content creators who made
Speaker 1: content about the Amber Heard Johnny Depp defamation trial have
Speaker 1: now jumped to making content about Megan Markle, people who
Speaker 1: you know, started making a name for themselves during the
Speaker 1: Amber Heard trial by making these videos attacking Amber Heard. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, trials over officially. Now I think like she
Speaker 1: just abandoned her appeal. If i'm yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think that's I know, yeah, yeah, cool. Who are you gonna?
Speaker 1: Who are you gonna? You need to find another woman
Speaker 1: that you can attack? And you know that sounds a
Speaker 1: little facetious, but you look at um Megan the Stallion,
Speaker 1: how she was covered, and you kind of wonder at
Speaker 1: least that was a lawsuit. It makes sort of sense
Speaker 1: that people who covered Amber Heard would pivot to Megan
Speaker 1: the Stallion and then somehow they found out that if
Speaker 1: you make a video belt Megan Marco, you are going
Speaker 1: to get views. Don't don't know how they tripped and
Speaker 1: fell into that, but you now see people who made
Speaker 1: videos like even in some cases like lawyers YouTube lawyers
Speaker 1: who made videos analyzing the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
Speaker 1: court case are making videos analyzing Harry Megan's documentary, Like
Speaker 1: what what what? What? What qualifies you for that? But
Speaker 1: also like you're kind of pull on a bait and
Speaker 1: switch here, my dude, right, And I think it just
Speaker 1: really shows like it's misogyny the whole way down, like
Speaker 1: misogyny cells. There will always our internet landscape. In our
Speaker 1: internet landscape, there will always be a soft place for
Speaker 1: misogyny to land and be amplified. And the one the
Speaker 1: like do you think that this is gonna be kind
Speaker 1: of going forward the new way to sort of sway
Speaker 1: public opinion and like manipulate public opinion going forward? Where
Speaker 1: the whole cottage industry, tree of quote, body language experts
Speaker 1: and legal experts like is the thing? So like I'm
Speaker 1: really glad you brought up the body language experts because
Speaker 1: to me, you're asking like, what's what's the direction that
Speaker 1: you can see this sort of hate going in. I
Speaker 1: think that the rise of body language experts, um that's
Speaker 1: I would say that's probably over the past year. I've
Speaker 1: seen a few of them, like get bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to see a lot of that
Speaker 1: because you can make it up like I don't think
Speaker 1: your body language expert. I think you're looking at a
Speaker 1: video of somebody and you you think Megan is a narcissist.
Speaker 1: So you're going to find something in her eyebrow or
Speaker 1: in the curve of her lip that is proof that
Speaker 1: she's a narcissist. And guess what, people who don't like
Speaker 1: her are gonna believe you. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: be seeing a lot more of that with just the
Speaker 1: public figures in general, with and you know, so far,
Speaker 1: it looks like people are really really happy to do
Speaker 1: it to famous women and women of color. So I
Speaker 1: think things like that where the facts don't matter, where
Speaker 1: you can set yourself up as an expert. You can
Speaker 1: set yourself up as someone who knows all of this
Speaker 1: background knowledge, and there will be a place on the
Speaker 1: Internet where people believe you. And if there are enough
Speaker 1: people in that little place where people believe you, it's
Speaker 1: gonna get out into the it's gonna get into the
Speaker 1: broader sphere. There will be a time when they will
Speaker 1: want to push their narrative in a very public way.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the tiniest, tiniest step in the right direction.
Speaker 1: I know that last year YouTube made a change that
Speaker 1: they d ranked anti Megan Markel results from their search
Speaker 1: for me. That's, like, I guess, the smallest step because
Speaker 1: if I was running a platform like YouTube, if you
Speaker 1: type in Megan Merkel or really any subject, people, the
Speaker 1: first thing that the results that are prioritized should not
Speaker 1: be from single youth hate accounts. They should not be
Speaker 1: from accounts that that are making money from lying about
Speaker 1: this thing for any topic. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: happy to see it, will champion it. But it is
Speaker 1: like the smallest step that they could actually take in
Speaker 1: in responsibly managing the platform. And you know that, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you this is an old old song to sing
Speaker 1: for you, But they didn't make that change until I
Speaker 1: reach out for comment. And that's true of so many
Speaker 1: tech companies, is that the onus is on reporters to
Speaker 1: find something that's bad, to find a feature that's not great,
Speaker 1: to find, you know, a community of hate accounts to
Speaker 1: find uh, you know, like members of the KKK and
Speaker 1: other hate groups, and the tech companies are reactive. So
Speaker 1: I hate reach out being like, why do I see
Speaker 1: a video claiming Megan Markel is a narcissist? When when
Speaker 1: I do a search, and then like a few days later,
Speaker 1: it was, oh, look, all of the videos when you
Speaker 1: search Megan Markel are by verified accounts, and they're all
Speaker 1: by major news sites. And you know that's not the
Speaker 1: way for tech companies to operate either. You know, if
Speaker 1: you want to keep your platforms free of hate, you
Speaker 1: need to look for the hate. It will definitely be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any time, like we've been in this game for a while,
Speaker 1: pretty much, any time a tech company does something that's
Speaker 1: even the slightest step in the right direction, they didn't
Speaker 1: just like grow a heart overnight like in The Grinch.
Speaker 1: They it was because someone like you, or like an
Speaker 1: organizer or someone pushed them to do that. They are
Speaker 1: so reactive it never occurs to them that you don't
Speaker 1: have to wait until you get negative pr or until
Speaker 1: there's a crisis, or until you know someone is asking
Speaker 1: you something to make a responsible ethical decision about how
Speaker 1: your platform is run. Yeah, I mean the same thing
Speaker 1: the I I have attacked YouTube's current policy for harassment
Speaker 1: and hate speech, but they only instituted that because a
Speaker 1: right wing YouTuber was attacking um, a l g B
Speaker 1: t q uh YouTuber and I think, like the example
Speaker 1: that he always uses that he called him a list
Speaker 1: be queer. And this guy made a video compilation of
Speaker 1: like all of the things that this right wing and
Speaker 1: has said about him, and was like, YouTube, what's going
Speaker 1: on attacking He's obviously attacking me because I am a
Speaker 1: gay man. And YouTube was like that, that's fine, and
Speaker 1: then like media backlash three days later, Oh hey we
Speaker 1: have a new policy. Yeah. I believe in a world
Speaker 1: where it doesn't take somebody, it doesn't take the harm
Speaker 1: to make a change in the right direction. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the word I want to believe in. Yeah. And well,
Speaker 1: just another another thing with YouTube is even like one
Speaker 1: of the things that happens before your account goes away
Speaker 1: is it gets demonetized. So yes, YouTube can can stop
Speaker 1: you from making money off your hate, but until you
Speaker 1: cross a certain line, like, you can still spew your
Speaker 1: hate all over you can still spread these conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: You can talk about people so that your your viewers,
Speaker 1: your listeners will then go attack them on social media.
Speaker 1: And if I learned, like the biggest thing I've learned
Speaker 1: from my work in the past year looking at you know,
Speaker 1: hate groups online against Megan and Harry, it's that YouTube
Speaker 1: is just a festering pool for so many different things
Speaker 1: like it, and it's even a community like people people
Speaker 1: talk to each other in the comments, and people like
Speaker 1: YouTuber encourages the company almost seems to encourage this, and
Speaker 1: people can make money for hate and it's yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was seeing some of these accounts that have
Speaker 1: monetized their antemtical content. I know one British person who
Speaker 1: runs a channel like let's say what a quitter job,
Speaker 1: like literally quit her job in order to make these
Speaker 1: videos every few days because of the amount of money
Speaker 1: she was getting from YouTube. Something is broken. Like when
Speaker 1: that is when that is a possibility, something is very
Speaker 1: very wrong. Elie. I have to ask like, like what
Speaker 1: is at steak here? Like like what is at steak?
Speaker 1: And do you think there's any hope for the truth,
Speaker 1: you know, being something that's prioritized going forward? I think
Speaker 1: that he you can't agree on what is the truth.
Speaker 1: And you can't have a conversation about what is the truth,
Speaker 1: and you can't have a conversation in good faith, then
Speaker 1: just the the the Internet dialogue, everything is going to
Speaker 1: stay broken. And the thing that these tech companies do
Speaker 1: is they let us stay in our own little groups
Speaker 1: and falls through this kind of hatred and these kind
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories, and people begin to believe that, Like
Speaker 1: when I tell you that there are people on Twitter
Speaker 1: who hate Megan, who genuinely believe that she was a
Speaker 1: prostitute before she met Harry. Some people even believe that
Speaker 1: she was Prince Andrew's prostitute before she met Prince Harry.
Speaker 1: And people who believe that she faked her pregnancies. Some
Speaker 1: people who believe that she, you know, like her children
Speaker 1: when she's done press appearances with her children, those children
Speaker 1: are not hers. There's no latter conspiracy theory showing how
Speaker 1: like I say showing, I'm doing air quotation marks when
Speaker 1: I say show, but that you know, the child of
Speaker 1: like a TV anchor is actually Archie and they only
Speaker 1: bring him out for certain occasions, or when Megan was
Speaker 1: carrying Archie in a like a front a front BabyCare carrier, like, no,
Speaker 1: that was a doll. There are people who believe this.
Speaker 1: They are not kidding. And how can you have a
Speaker 1: conversation about things like, Okay, Harry, Harry's biography just came out.
Speaker 1: He's saying, what's about to come out. Harry's biography will
Speaker 1: be coming out. We know what some of the headlines are. Wow,
Speaker 1: he's really saying a lot of stuff here. Let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation about that. You can't because the people who
Speaker 1: are going to be entering into that conversation are coming
Speaker 1: from their own world. And you know, everyone saw this
Speaker 1: play out when it was you know, Trump and Q
Speaker 1: and on and everything like that. And when people have
Speaker 1: their own belief systems, and when the internet and tech
Speaker 1: companies encourage them not to branch out and actually like
Speaker 1: help them stay in their own little bubble, it makes
Speaker 1: the online experience worse. It makes discourse worse. And you know,
Speaker 1: and this is this is me because I'm a reporter,
Speaker 1: but it makes the news worse because people don't agree
Speaker 1: on the truth. And that should be the basic starting
Speaker 1: point here. Everyone agrees on the truth. If we can't
Speaker 1: even establish that, like Megan gave birth to a child,
Speaker 1: how are we going to have any conversation about the
Speaker 1: Royal family. It was Megan entering the Royal family when
Speaker 1: all of this started. And you know, was there some
Speaker 1: hate of Kate, yes, But it didn't start getting this
Speaker 1: nasty until Megan dating Harry became public knowledge. And when
Speaker 1: you have that fact, and that is a fact, you
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself what is it about Megan? What
Speaker 1: was it about Megan before the world even knew her,
Speaker 1: before she had even you know, before I think it
Speaker 1: was this was like even before the engagement interview that
Speaker 1: she and Harry did. What is it about Megan? What
Speaker 1: makes her different? That is school we to start this
Speaker 1: festering and ever growing, you know, bubble of hatred. Well
Speaker 1: draw your own conclusions. That is a great place to
Speaker 1: leave it. Ellie, Where can folks follow? I know you're
Speaker 1: gonna have lots of takes and opinions when the memoir
Speaker 1: drops this week. Where can folks follow you? I am
Speaker 1: on Twitter at least for now at Ellie, Ellie v Hall,
Speaker 1: Vias and Victor and I report for BuzzFeed News, So
Speaker 1: you can go to BuzzFeed News and search my name
Speaker 1: and see all of my stuff. And I have a
Speaker 1: Royal family newsletter called The Royalty Um. And if you're
Speaker 1: super into all of this stuff and just want to
Speaker 1: keep following, keeping up with it with the windsor family,
Speaker 1: then you can subscribe to me there. Fantastic. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm so bad at ending the podcast and what else
Speaker 1: have I hope to say? I mean, you're solid there.
Speaker 1: Good night and good luck, good night and good luck.
Speaker 1: I'll be leave it there. Internet Hate Machine is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.