Prince Harry and Meghan Markle owe their love story to social media — but it destroyed their royal life

Prince Harry first saw Meghan Markle on a mutual friend's Instagram Story in 2016 — using the dog-ears filter that was popular at the time — and was immediately drawn to her, as he revealed in their Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan."

And as modern-day single women often do, after realizing the prince was interested in her, Meghan browsed through his secret Instagram feed, hoping to find clues about his life beyond what the tabloids detailed — or as Meghan put it in the docuseries, to see "not what someone else says about them, but what they are putting out about themselves."

The two finally went on a date when Meghan visited London for the 2016 Wimbledon tournament. Harry was so late, he admitted in the docuseries, that Meghan began second-guessing the idea of giving the prince a chance. But when he eventually arrived — red-faced and embarrassed — sparks flew.

Their connection was so strong that Meghan agreed to meet Harry in Botswana for their third date. They both felt the weeklong trip was risky, they remembered in the doc, particularly because they hadn't seen each other in a month. But it ended up being the start of their love affair.

The couple kept their fairy-tale romance a secret, only telling close friends before they let the world in. After Halloween 2016, the last time they could go out with their friends without the world knowing, Harry and Meghan were met not only with cameras attempting to follow their every move but with piercing online vitriol that irrevocably changed the royal family.

No one suspected that social media had brought Harry and Meghan together when they otherwise may have never met. But, as they shared in their new series, online social platforms also became a toxic breeding ground for targeted harassment campaigns to flourish. And it's a major reason why they stepped back as senior royals.

"Back in my mum's days, it was physical harassment," Harry said in episode three of the docuseries, referring to Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car crash after being chased by paparazzi. "They had cameras in your face, following you, chasing you."

"Paparazzi still harass people, but the harassment really exists more online now," he went on to say. "Once the photographs are out and the story is then put next to it, then comes the social-media harassment."

As Harry pointed out in the series, social media has given the general public more access to famous people than ever before — and a way to share their thoughts, good or bad, about them anytime.

For public figures, that means not only dealing with tabloid stories but also thousands of anonymous people writing messages that range from celebratory to downright demeaning and even threatening.

And as a study shows, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not casually trolled on social media: They were the targets of coordinated hate campaigns.

In 2021, Bot Sentinel studied 114,000 tweets about Harry and Meghan. As Insider previously reported, the study found that 70% of hateful tweets about the couple were created by just 83 Twitter accounts that were able to reach 17 million people collectively. These accounts were working together to maximize the dissemination of harmful messages about the royal couple.

"They were coordinating and talking about what they would discuss for that particular day or week, what pictures they should disseminate," Christopher Bouzy, the founder and CEO of Bot Sentinel, said of the Twitter accounts in episode five. "They were actively recruiting people, telling people how to create multiple accounts, how to use VPNs, you know, virtual private networks to hide the IP, so they don't get suspended. It's insane."

"And it was done by people who were just not the 'typical' trolls," he added. "These are housewives. These are middle-aged Caucasian women creating just constant attacks, from 'Go back to America,' to basically, you know, 'Why don't you die?'"

Bouzy said that Meghan's half-sister, Samantha Markle, was among these trolls, and has had multiple Twitter accounts dedicated to harassing Meghan.

One of her accounts, @TheMarkleSammy, was suspended in March 2022 after BuzzFeed News' Ellie Hall reported Samantha seemed to be using the account to spread misinformation about Meghan, including a conspiracy theory that she faked her pregnancies.

When contacted by Insider in March 2022, Samantha's lawyer, Douglas Kahle, denied BuzzFeed's allegations, said the account had been hacked, and suggested the screenshots included in BuzzFeed's story were edited. And when contacted by Insider for this piece, Samantha's lawyer Peter Ticktin denied BuzzFeed's allegations that Samantha tweeted misinformation about Meghan's pregnancies and children.

These Twitter accounts targeting Harry and Meghan were insidious, but they became even more harmful as other social-media users shared the content and some tabloid journalists amplified the messages.

Prince Harry spoke about the Bot Sentinel study and how social-media feeds into mainstream media for a 2021 Wired panel, during which he said he's "most troubled" by "British journalists interacting with and amplifying the hate and the lies."

On the panel, Harry gave the example of the term "Megxit," which some outlets use to refer to Harry and Meghan's step back as senior royals.

"Maybe people know this and maybe they don't, but the term 'Megxit' was or is a misogynistic term," Harry said during the panel. "It was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media."

"When a lie spreads on social media, it's dangerous," the duke went on to say. "Of course it is. But when that same lie is given credibility by journalists or publishers, it's unethical, and as far as I'm concerned, an abuse of power."

Harry stressed in "Harry & Meghan" that it was his idea, not Meghan's, to step back from their duties as senior royals in 2020 and live their life outside of the UK. He added that his issues with British tabloids had plagued him nearly his entire life, making the term even more misleading.

In episode one of the series, Harry emotionally recalled how he was "uncomfortable" as a child being "forced into smiling and answering questions" for the paparazzi. His disdain for the tabloids only intensified after his mother's death.

Not only did he blame the press for her death, but he said the attention they thrust upon her soon shifted to him and Prince William in her absence. Harry said he was physically chased by photographers between 30 to 40 times in his youth, and he reached a breaking point that led him to go on extended reprieves to Africa.

When Harry met Meghan, he didn't want the cycle of tragedy to continue.

"I accept that there will be people around the world who will fundamentally disagree with what I've done and how I've done it, but I knew that I had to do everything I could to protect my family, especially after what happened to my mum," he said. "I didn't want history to repeat itself."

Meghan also shared in the series how social media seeped into their lives offline. She added that tweets with death threats are part of their security team's surveillance process, as these online messages are sometimes indicators of actual plans to enact violence.

Meghan described the online harassment she faced while living in the UK as "almost unsurvivable" during an October 2020 appearance on the podcast "Teenager Therapy," underscoring the real toll these virtual harassers had on her.

In the docuseries, Harry said the royal family wrote off the harassment Meghan faced in the UK as a "rite of passage," but as time went on, it became clear the tabloid-media coverage about her was different because of its racist undertones. Tabloids published pieces that clearly showed a double standard between Meghan and Prince William's wife, Kate Middleton, or reports about the Duchess of Sussex that fell into "angry Black woman" tropes.

The racist themes pushed by the press were amplified on social media, where people often shared racist memes about the couple and their son, Archie.

As he shared in episode four of "Harry & Meghan," one of the first things Harry saw on social media after Archie's birth in 2019 was a tweet that included a photograph of a man and a woman with a chimp that was captioned "royal baby leaves hospital," highlighting just how egregious the racist attacks on the Sussexes were.

In their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the duchess said she had struggled with depression during her time as a senior royal. She also shared that she dealt with suicidal thoughts when she was pregnant with Archie and was denied help from the institution; in "Harry & Meghan," the duchess revealed that she had approached a royal staff member about getting professional help but was turned away.

As Harry and Meghan dealt with the barrage of harassment from both tabloids and social media, the Brexit movement was also playing out in the UK. Brexit, which was rife with racist and xenophobic rhetoric aimed at immigrants, normalized hateful language in the UK — from signs and slogans to the more subtle, but just as hurtful, tabloid coverage of the biracial American woman joining the royal family.

The Sussexes also said in their sit-down with Winfrey that an unnamed member of the royal family had made racist comments about their son before his birth, speculating on his skin tone.

While Harry and Meghan may have been destined to meet, the story of a prince and his American bride falling in love ultimately shows the dual sides of social media — its unifying power and the staggering way it tears us apart.

Representatives for Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.