Meghan Markle Thinks Instagram Should Have This Controversial Feature
It's no secret that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been at the heart of heavily negative social media commentary. On October 26, Twitter analytics company Bot Sentinel released a shocking report that analyzed 114,000 tweets concerning the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Out of those, the service discovered that 70% of negative comments came from a mere 83 accounts, unveiling a coordinated attack on the couple. "We used friend/follower connections, retweets, and mentions to identify accounts that were part of the same hate network," the report stated. "Our research revealed these accounts were brazenly coordinating on the platform, and at least one account was openly recruiting people to join their hate initiative on Twitter." (Some accounts were even skirting detection by Twitter by using "racist coded language about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex," per Bot Sentinel's report, or locking or deactivating their profiles temporarily to duck suspicion.)
Meghan has previously talked about targeted social media hate, addressing her status as the "most trolled in the entire world" of 2019 on the Teenager Therapy podcast in October 2020. "I don't care if you're 15 or you're 25, if people are saying things about you that aren't true, what that does to your mental and emotional health is so damaging," she said. Given this, it is no wonder the Duchess would love for Instagram to have this specific feature.
Meghan Markle wants an Instagram dislike button and here's why
Meghan Markle is understandably worried about decreasing social media negativity — and she thinks she has a solution for it. At a November 9 appearance at The New York Times' DealBook conference (via INSIDER), the Duchess of Sussex suggested Instagram adds a "dislike" button for posts to fend off written negativity in the comments sections. "I think there are strong ways to make strong changes on social media platforms and with the media in general, but people have to be brave enough to do it," Meghan said.
The lack of a dislike button contributes to people disagreeing with posts "in a really vitriolic way," Meghan pointed out, continuing, "If there was a dislike button, wouldn't that hugely shift what you were putting out there? Because you could just like it or dislike it."
Worried about social media's "unfortunate cycle that I think is having a ripple effect on women across the board," Meghan also expressed concern for those afflicted with social media addiction. Having quit it herself over a year ago (via INSIDER), Meghan explained at the conference, "There are very few things in this world where you call the person engaging with it 'a user.' People who are addicted to drugs are called users and people who are on social media are called users."