Kensington Palace’s release of Prince Louis’s birthday portrait on Tuesday made me remember just how bonkers the Mother’s Day fiasco was as it unfolded in real time. It was such a chaotic 24 hours, made even more surreal by the fact that it was all happening ON Oscar night. That was March 10-11th, and the Princess of Wales had already been missing for two and a half months. More rounds of shenanigans followed until the cancer-announcement video, which aired on March 22nd. It should not be underestimated that for a good eight-week period, “Where Is Kate” was THE biggest story. People from all walks of life were talking about it and theorizing about what the f–k was going on. Every palace lie, every obfuscation, every bonkers conspiracy, every piece of faked or manipulated media just added fuel to an enormous unfolding scandal.
Over the past month though, the British media has been doing the most to blame the entire thing on anyone other than Prince William and the clowns who work for the palace. There have been multiple stories about how “Russian hackers” and foreign-state actors are the ones behind the whole fiasco. The latest is that the British government insists that a Russian group “fueled conspiracy theories” about Kate. Wait until you see how many accounts they’re talking about.
A Russian hacking group named Doppelgänger fuelled conspiracy theories about the Princess of Wales, an online security expert said. The group, which was first detected spreading misinformation in 2022, is run by a commercial organisation out of Russia to sow distrust in public institutions, including the British monarchy.
Martin Innes, a professor from the Security, Crime, and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University, said: “They will try to leap on and hijack any major story that they think that they can manipulate to further Russia’s aims, so denigrating Ukraine and trying to undermine the war effort.”
He explained that the group used the virulent nature of the conspiracies that circulated about the Princess’s health and whereabouts before she announced her cancer diagnosis to further these aims.
“It’s very often they’re not making original posts, but they’re replying to posts that other people have made,” he said. “Obviously they did engage with some of the conspiracies, because they have to build an audience and try and get followers … but the real purpose was to jump on the trending hashtags and use those to push the messages that they wanted.”
More recently, they were also found to be instrumental in the spread of misinformation about the video in which the Princess announced she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy.
The original video, posted to X, has been viewed more than 106 million times, and on TikTok there have been more than 14 billion views on videos about the Princess in just a month. Prof Innes said that his disinformation research programme initially spotted Doppelgänger’s involvement by seeing a number of “suspicious spikes” online in comments talking about Ukraine and Russia under videos or posts about the Princess.
It was discovered that in a single day, 45 different accounts were found to be pushing and repurposing various theories related to the Princess, enough for them to link back to Doppelgänger.
“45 different accounts” you guys. Forty-five Twitter accounts or TikTok users were… piggybacking on the biggest story and spreading disinformation in the comments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this was happening. But the Kate-Gate controversy was not started by Russians nor did Russian hackers propel the story through all of the chaotic twists and turns. It’s certainly on-brand for the British media to declare “it was foreigners” and just end the discussion. Where is the larger discussion about how badly Kensington Palace f–ked up? Where is the discussion about how the British media’s invisible contract with the palace has led them to this utter catastrophe? Also: “on TikTok there have been more than 14 billion views on videos about the Princess in just a month” – that’s because TikTok users have been analyzing the cancer video to figure out if it is AI.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, covers courtesy of The Sun and The Mail.
