Meghan and Harry Hashtags Sending Twitter Users Down 'Crazy Rabbit Hole'

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Prince William are among royals who are the subject of negative hashtags that Twitter's algorithm encourages users towards, Newsweek has found.

The social media platform suggests possible search terms based on what content other users have been viewing.

However, Christopher Bouzy, of Bot Sentinel, told Newsweek this has given anti-fan communities a means to drive hostile content about the royals to the surface.

Some of the hashtags and search terms suggested by Twitter's search box to Newsweek have been problematic to the point they could not be printed by a respectable news outlet, including conspiracy theories about the mental health of royal children.

Others contained allegations that could be actionable for libel if printed by a mainstream media company, Newsweek has been told.

Twitter has been approached for comment.

Bouzy said: "The algorithms, they believe that this is what people want to see. When you put in 'Meghan' or 'Harry,' the algorithm, it fills out the rest for you and more than likely its going to be something negative. My opinion is it has to be fixed.

"It's a significant problem that folks like myself have been screaming into the void about."

Typing "Meghan" into the search box of Twitter prompted the social media platform to offer the hashtags "#MeghanMarkleGoHome" and "#MeghanMarkleBulliedCharlotte."

Typing "#Meghan" prompted Twitter to suggest "#MeghanMarkleIsAGrifter," "#MeghanMarkleisaRacist" and "#MeghanMarkleExposed."

Meanwhile, "#PrinceHarry" triggered the suggestion "PrinceHarryIsATraitor" while "Kate Middleton" leads to "Kate Middleton is mean" and "#KateMiddleton" leads to "#Katemiddletonisabully."

Typing "#PrinceWilliam" led to "#PrinceWilliamisaBully" and "#KingCharles" led to "#KingCharlestheCruel."

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at U.K. firm Howard Kennedy, told Newsweek: "It clearly is possible that it could be a defamation, the problem of course is proving how many people it was offered to.

"But I think it's a reasonable inference that it would have been offered to a significant number of people because otherwise it wouldn't have been predicted.

"The algorithm takes what other people are putting in as the option but nobody is policing those algorithms for the defamatory content."

Stephens said he believed some of the hashtags relating to royal children could give rise to a privacy lawsuit.

He added: "They need to think more carefully about it. Just because people are searching for defamatory terms, doesn't mean you should be serving them up and it's part of this AI. They've got to learn to have proper levels of protection in."

Bouzy said: "What's happening here is there are folks that are spamming all this negative stuff, these hashtags.

"It's taking people down this crazy rabbit hole. You put in Meghan Markle and you may see something like 'Meghan Markle is a Narcissist' or 'Meghan Markle is a Grifter' or something along those lines.

"Your curiosity leads you to click on that and then all of a sudden you see all these crazy tweets from folks who have been doing this non-stop for months."

Meghan told the Teenager Therapy podcast in 2020 about the effect that online negativity had on her.

She said: "I'm told that in 2019, I was the most trolled person in the entire world―male or female.

"Eight months of that, I wasn't even visible. I was on maternity leave with a baby, but what was able to be manufactured and churned out―it's almost unsurvivable."

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.