Prince Harry has hit out at social media for the role it played in the deadly US Capitol riots, naming the sites a ‘threat to democracy’.
The Duke of Sussex has warned ‘the stakes are too high, and time is running out’ for companies to address damaging misinformation.
He claims a false narrative of his and wife Meghan Markle’s relationship was ‘the mothership for all of the harassment’ they experienced, which would not have happened had their story been told truthfully.
Speaking in a new interview with Fast Company, the royal was asked if social media bosses like Twitter owner Jack Dorsey were right to choose who could use their platforms – likely referring to Donald Trump’s ejection from the site.
He replied: ‘We have seen time and again what happens when the real-world cost of misinformation is disregarded. There is no way to downplay this.
‘There was a literal attack on democracy in the United States, organised on social media, which is an issue of violent extremism.
‘It is widely acknowledged that social media played a role in the genocide in Myanmar and was used as a vehicle to incite violence against the Rohingya people, which is a human rights issue. And in Brazil, social media provided a conduit for misinformation which ultimately brought destruction to the Amazon, which is an environmental and global health issue.
‘In a way, taking a predominately hands-off approach to problems for so long is itself an exercise in power.’
He went onto warn ‘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’.
The duke denied reports that he and the Duchess of Sussex had ‘quit’ social media, saying ‘we have no social media to quit, nor have we for the past 10 months’.
Discussing the abuse they received on social sites after they got together, he said it led them to think about others in more vulnerable positions around the world.
Prince Harry said social media ‘can offer a means of connecting and community’, adding that he has to be optimistic for a healthier online ecosystem for his son Archie.
Saying he still believes in the good of human beings, he added: ‘We look forward to being part of the human experience—not a human experiment.’
It comes after Meghan said she was the ‘most trolled person in the entire world’ in 2019.
Speaking to the Teenager Therapy podcast, she said: ’Eight months of that I wasn’t even visible – I was on maternity leave or with a baby. But what was able to be manufactured and churned out, it’s almost unsurvivable.’
MORE : Prince William says seeing people die as air ambulance pilot ‘traumatised’ him
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source https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/23/prince-harry-calls-social-media-threat-to-democracy-after-capitol-riots-13953281/