SPEAKING OUT

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Tell Big Business to Stop Funding Platforms That ‘Stoke a Crisis of Hate’

“Our message was clear: The digital landscape is unwell,” Prince Harry wrote of his and wife Meghan Markle’s lobbying of business leaders to stop helping finance “hate” sites.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are lobbying business leaders, heads of major corporations, and chief marketing officers at brands and organizations to stop funding and supporting what Harry claims are online platforms “that have contributed to, stoked, and created the conditions for a crisis of hate, a crisis of health, and a crisis of truth.”

Harry revealed the couple’s campaigning in an article written for Fast Company, saying their lobbying had begun around a month ago. “Our message was clear: The digital landscape is unwell,” he wrote, praising the work of civil rights and racial justice campaign called Stop Hate For Profit, whose own lobbying had led to $7 billion of “withheld ad dollars.” Harry went further, criticizing technology’s reach into our private lives: “Every time you click, they learn more about you. Our information, private data, and unknown habits are traded on for advertising space and dollars. The price we’re all paying is much higher than it appears.”

It is necessary, the prince said, “to remodel the architecture of our online community in a way defined more by compassion than hate; by truth instead of misinformation; by equity and inclusiveness instead of injustice and fear-mongering; by free, rather than weaponized, speech.” Harry’s article comes at the same time as he and Meghan conduct legal actions against multiple media outlets, alleging various invasions of their privacy, including phone hacking and paparazzi using drones.