Prince Harry is not mincing words when it comes to how he feels about social media and the role it plays in proliferating conspiracy theories and detaching users from reality.
In a Q&A with Fast Company, the royal revisited an essay he wrote for the publication in August calling on business leaders to rethink how they fund the advertising systems that spread false information on social media. The outlet asked how his perspective has changed over the last six months, to which Harry replied, “I was sharing my view that dominant online platforms have contributed to and stoked the conditions for a crisis of hate, a crisis of health, and a crisis of truth. And I stand by that, along with millions of others who see and feel what this era has done at every level—we are losing loved ones to conspiracy theories, losing a sense of self because of the barrage of mistruths, and at the largest scale, losing our democracies.” He added, “It could be as individual as seeing a loved one go down the path of radicalization or as collective as seeing the science behind the climate crisis denied. We are all vulnerable to it, which is why I don’t see it as a tech issue, or a political issue—it’s a humanitarian issue.”
The Duke of Sussex also addressed the “well-documented online harassment” he and his wife, Meghan Markle, have faced, explaining, “I was really surprised to witness how my story had been told one way, my wife’s story had been told one way, and then our union sparked something that made the telling of that story very different.” He continued, “That false narrative became the mothership for all of the harassment you’re referring to. It wouldn’t have even begun had our story just been told truthfully.” Although he added that the silver lining of having gone through that experience is that it opened his and Meghan’s eyes to what people “in much more vulnerable positions than us” might be going through.
He went on to speak about the Capitol riots and the role social media played in enabling that violence, saying, “We should avoid buying into the idea that social media is the ultimate modern-day public square and that any attempt to ask platforms to be accountable to the landscape they’ve created is an attack or restriction of speech. I think it’s a false choice to say you have to pick between free speech or a more compassionate and trustworthy digital world. They are not mutually exclusive.”
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