Meghan Markle reportedly expressed her support for Social Media Kindness Day on Monday, Nov. 9. However, her statement on the campaign's official Twitter account has been removed hours after sharing it in public.
The Duchess of Sussex said she felt sad that such an initiative has to happen in today's society. However, Meghan also said that she fully supports the cause and hopes that the campaign will receive its "much-needed awareness."
Social Media Kindness Day was established to commemorate Caroline Flack, the British presenter who took her own life in February 2020 due to trolling and online bullying. Flack was going to turn 41 on Nov. 9.
The presenter was supposed to stand trial for allegedly attacking her boyfriend in December 2019. The coroner said that she was distressed and suffered from "fluctuating ill health" when she "caused her own death."
Royal fans and journalists, including Omid Scobie, the author of the unofficial Meghan and Prince Harry biography Finding Freedom, shared the post attributed to Meghan. But the campaign's Twitter account deleted the post and switched to private, according to News Corp Australia.
It's unclear if the statement linked to the Duchess of Sussex was actually her own words. However, Meghan said in a podcast interview for World Mental Health Day in October that she was told she's the most trolled person of 2019.
Speaking with the podcasters on Teenager Therapy, Meghan said that her experience as the subject of online abuse was "almost unsurvivable." Prince Harry's wife said that it's easy to get sucked into the negativity on social media but ultimately, the choice is still up to the user.
Since marrying Prince Harry and scaling back on her royal duties at the beginning of the year, Meghan said that she hasn't been on any social media platform for so long. Meghan used to have an active Instagram account but she stopped posting on it when she and Harry became engaged in November 2017.
The Duchess of Sussex also had an official royal Instagram, @SussexRoyal, but Meghan said she was not the person who posted on the account when it was still active. Ultimately, she and Prince Harry had to give up their official social media profile after they quit their royal roles in March 2020.
Meghan said during a virtual panel at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit that having no more social media accounts has been good for her self-preservation. She said she's no longer aware of what stories about her are online and it's been helpful to her sanity.
