Harry and Meghan go to war on web misinformation

Duke of Sussex warns tech leaders that ‘a global crisis of hate’ has taken root on the internet

THE Duke of Sussex has warned that misinformation “snowballs” from the internet into real life, hampering progress and distracting people from issues that they should be focusing on, such as the environment. The 36-year-old Duke said there was often no way of knowing where facts originated, causing a “global crisis” that was creating confusion and undermining trust.

“It is not restricted to certain platforms or certain social media conversations or groups,” he said.

“This is a global crisis – a global crisis of hate, a global crisis of misinformation, and a global health crisis.”

Both the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were hosting a 90-minute “virtual conversation” speaking to a series of friends and tech leaders about the dangers of social media and internet addiction. They included Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, who is married to the Duchess’s friend Serena Williams, and Tristan Harris, president of the Centre for Humane Technology.

The special edition of TIME100 Talks, called Engineering a Better World, featured a series of pre-recorded discussions as the couple continued to explore some of the key themes they have focused on since moving to the US earlier this year.

The Duke acknowledged that the role of the media was “absolutely vital in everything that i s going on in the world”, but he added: “There’s a huge amount of trust that we all put into media and digital platforms that sometimes is undermined.

“Now, more than ever, there is this overwhelming desire for truth, because there is so much information being thrown from one side to the other.”

He said he and his wife were keen to “remain neutral, in as much that truth is neutral”. As the couple introduced the event from their new home in California, the Duke said: “For the things that I’m passionate about – certainly for the environment that I’ve been involved with for 12, 15 years now – what I see is the digital space is hampering the progress that needs to be made.

“This misinformation that seems to snowball from one place that is in the online space, and then ending up in our physical world. A lot of the time we don’t know where it comes from, we don’t know how to trace it back.”

Explaining the background to the couple’s work on issues such as gender equality, racial justice and climate change, the Duchess, 39, said they had realised that they could “continue to champion these things we are passionate about” and to effect change.

But she said that it was hard to make progress without getting to the “root cause of the problem”, which was online. She added: “It’s not just a tech problem, it’s not just a mental health and well-being problem, this is a human problem, and what’s happening to all of us online is affecting us deeply offline.”