Prince Harry says social media stoking 'crisis of hate', asks companies to 'reconsider'

Britain’s Prince Harry said on August 6 that the “digital landscape is unwell” and social media is stoking “crisis of hate” while also appealing the major firms to rethink their roles in advertising on their platforms. In an opinion piece for US business magazine, Fast Company called ‘Social media is dividing us. Together, we can redesign it’, Prince Harry said he and his wife, Meghan have spent a few weeks contacting the business leaders and their marketing personnel on the same issue.

According to him, companies have the opportunity to reconsider their role in funding and supporting 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’.

With an array of issues going around across the world ranging from COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth has called for online communities to be defined more by compassion than hate, by truth and not false information, by equity and inclusiveness instead of bias and fearmongering. Moreover, Prince Harry believes that it should be free instead of weaponising speech. 

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Meghan Markle on ‘painfully loud’ negative voices

Prince Harry’s piece came just few weeks after the Duchess of Sussex called on young women and girls across the globe who grew up in the digital era to tone down the “painfully loud” negative voices with their positive ones. While speaking virtually at United Nations Foundation's 2020 Girl Up Leadership Summit alongside other speakers including former US First lady Michelle Obama and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the Duchess of Sussex noted that “there will always be negative voices”. Addressing over 40,000 teenage girls and women, she mentioned both the power and the downside of the online platforms but urged them to shut the ‘noise’ down.

"You understand that our online world has the power to affirm and support as much as it does to harm. There will always be negative voices and sometimes those voices can appear to be outsized, and sometimes they can appear to be painfully loud," said Duchess of Sussex.

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