A royal expert has slammed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for ‘not practising what they preach’ after their CBS interview on online …
A royal expert has slammed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for ‘not practising what they preach’ after their CBS interview on online safety on social media – hitting out at their links to tech entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy, whose online trolling of the Princess of Wales went as far as stating she was ageing as fast as a ‘banana’.
Speaking to FEMAIL, commentator Richard Fitzwilliams suggested that the Sussexes move to talk about protecting children from online harm and bullying was hypocritical, given the Brooklyn-born Silicon Valley star who featured as a talking head in their Netflix documentary has become ‘notorious’ for his cruel remarks on the Waleses.
Christopher had previously aimed personal attacks at Kate, William, King Charles and Queen Camilla, including comments about their appearance, writing once that the Prince of Wales ‘looks like a balding Muppet’.
On another occasion he remarked that the future King and his wife were ageing quickly, adding: ‘I don’t understand why, since they have a team of people who wait on them hand and foot 24/7.’
Around the same time on October 2021, he tweeted: ‘I’m sorry, but William and Kate look like Harry’s aunt and uncle’.
And shortly after the death of the Queen in September 2022, he said that critics of Meghan wanted to paint her ‘as some sort of harlot’, adding: ‘King Charles cheated on Diana and his mistress is now Queen Consort. All Meghan did was marry the man she loves while being black. Just stop.’Â
Christopher was thrown into the spotlight by the release of Meghan and Harry’s Netflix documentary, in which he claimed there is an agenda against the Duchess driven by ‘hatred and race’.Â
He was inspired to create his analytics business Bot Sentinel by the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections – as a tool to prevent the spread of misinformation.Â
He then came to the Sussexes’ attention when he claimed that he was targeted by anti-Meghan Markle Twitter users when he wrote something nice about the couple.
He claims that his research found that around 80 Twitter accounts were responsible for than two-thirds of all hateful ‘anti-Meghan’ messages.
Christopher has since launched own social network Spoutible – billed by him as X without the bad bits – describes itself as a ‘safe, inclusive, and enjoyable online space’ with a ‘zero-tolerance policy for targeted harassment.Â
His mother died in 2021 after being infected with COVID-19 while fighting cancer. He revealed that she was too scared to have the COVID-19 vaccine because ‘she had just heard so many different things [online]’.
He has said that her memory has inspired him further to force XÂ and other social media to remove misinformation.
However, within 30 minutes of Kate’s video announcing a cancer diagnosis, he was fuelling the fire surrounding conspiracy theories about in a rant to his 350,000 followers on X.
‘I am sorry to hear Kate has cancer, I hope she has a full recovery. But it is also clear that all three earlier photos of her were fake, and the palace tried to cover it up,’ he wrote.
Christopher was apparently referencing Kate’s Mother’s Day photo, a video of her shopping in Windsor and an image of her being driven in a car.
The 48-year-old added: ‘The palace lied, and the British Press happily helped them lie. The countless ‘conspiracy theory’ headlines, while knowing a lot of what was being said was true. This is really some North Korea/Trumpian type of propaganda.’
He went on to accuse Prince William of throwing his wife ‘under the bus’ over the altered Mother’s Day portrait and said he had failed to back her in her announcement.
He has also shared a CNN clip, which has now been viewed millions of times, in which a doctor claimed that Kate’s statement did not make ‘medical sense’.
Asked how cancer could be found after surgery, Jonathan Reiner said: ‘With all respect to the Royal Family, that kind of press release doesn’t make a lot of medical sense.’
The professor of medicine at George Washington University said such operations are preceded by extensive CAT scans and MRIs, adding it was ‘very likely’ the surgical team knew of the cancer prior to operating.
Several red-faced celebrities and commentators including Blake Lively and Kerry Katona have apologised for their careless comments about Kate.
Paddy Harverson, the former official spokesman of Kate and the Prince of Wales, said the online targeting of her was the worst he had witnessed. ‘It’s a sort of permanent doom loop. And it’s the worst I’ve ever seen,’ he told BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
Royal expert Richard added: ‘The launch on CBS of The Parents Network, to help those with the hashtag #NoChildLostToSocialMedia, a group of parents who have experienced the suffering which can be caused by social media, is undoubtedly an important step towards tackling a significant issue of contemporary concern.
‘It followed a pilot by Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation and is linked to their forthcoming visit to Colombia.’
However, he remarked: ‘You often judge individuals by the company they keep,’ hitting out at their links to Christopher and Omid Scobie – ‘whose latest book, Endgame, was involved in a disgraceful row over unproven allegations which has never been satisfactorily explained’.
The commentator also believes that Harry and Meghan’s appearance on CBS News Sunday hinted that the Duchess, 43, may speak more about the difficulties she faced as a senior working royal, given her statement that she ‘hadn’t really scraped the surface’ of suicidal fears she had endured.
‘It was a tragedy that this was a disaster with an undoubted impact on her mental health,’ Richard added.Â
‘She hinted that she would open up if it helped others and “take the hit for that”.’Â
Meghan candidly spoke about feelings she was subjected to as a working royal over the weekend.
The Suits star first detailed such struggles in March 2021, when she told Oprah Winfrey she ‘just didn’t want to be alive anymore’ because of abuse she was suffering online.
This time, Meghan told host Jane Pauley how she hoped her candor would help youngsters around the world navigate similar feelings after surfing the web.
Haley in turn asked the 43-year-old about her decision to open up about her response to ‘bullying and abuse’ on social media, spurring Meghan to answer while reaching out to her spouse for support.
‘When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey – certainly part of mine – is being able to be really open about it,’ Meghan said as Harry, 39, looked on.   Â
‘I really scraped the surface on my experience, but I do think that I would never want someone else to feel that way,’Â Â
‘And I would never want someone else to be making those sort of plans,’ she added.
‘[And] I would never want someone else to not be believed.’Â Â Â
‘If me voicing what I have overcome will save someone or encourage someone in their life to really, genuinely check in on them, and not assume the appearance is good so everything is OK, then that’s worth it,’ Markle concluded.
‘I’ll take a hit for that.’
She went on to share her desire to protect her two children, 5-year-old Archie and 3-year-old Lilibet, from such feelings, as well as the online content that can cause them.
Harry echoed this wish, before revealing some of the strategies the two take to do what’s best for their brood.
‘Our kids are young – they’re 3 and 5. They’re amazing,’ Meghan said.
‘But all you want to do as parents is protect them – so as we can see what’s happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work to be done there.
‘And we’re just happy to be able to be a part of change for good,’ she continued, referring to a program from their Archewell Foundation called The Parents Network, meant to support parents whose kids have been impacted negatively by social media.  Â
Pauley interjected: ‘You hope that when your children ask for help, someone, you know, is there to give it.’
This spurred Harry, who famously struggled as a boy after the death of his mother. to speak up, saying, ‘If you know how to help.
‘At this point, we’ve got to the stage where almost every parent needs to be a first responder,’ he went on.
 ‘And even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide.Â
‘That is the terrifying piece of this’, he added.
Both added how their initiative, after two years of testing, is now available for parents in the US, UK, and Canada, with Meghan encouraging onlookers to ‘look at it through the lens of ‘What if it was my daughter? What if it was my son?’.
‘If you look at it through the lens as a parent, there’s no way to see that any other way than to try to find a solution,’ she said.Â
The Parents Network and its ‘No Child Lost to Social Media’ campaign is the latest fruit of the pair’s nonprofit, which in March awarded $100,000 to a Ghanaian-American scientist to advance their work in civil and human rights.
Joy Buolamwini, 35, received the award for her ‘research to overcome racist and sexist biases in artificial intelligence’, as head of a digital advocacy non-profit that ‘unmasks’ the harms and biases of AI toward women and people of color.
Boasting two masters degrees from Oxford and MIT, she wrote on her website shortly before receiving the award ‘the rising frontier for civil rights require algorithmic justice’.
Harry and Meghan, in turn, said they ‘could not agree more.’
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