During the recent RE:WIRED virtual summit's 'Internet Lie Machine' panel, Prince Harry claimed that he saw the January 2021 US Capitol riots coming and warned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about how the platform was being used to stage a ‘coup’ the day before.

The Duke of Sussex sent Mr Dorsey an email informing him that Twitter was being misused by Trump supporters in a bid to overturn election results in January. He said he never received a response.

"Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6 when I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged," the 37-year-old royal prince said on the virtual summit.

"That email was sent the day before.”

"And then it happened, and I haven't heard from him since."

The role Twitter and other platforms such as Facebook played in enabling the attack, which left five people dead, is currently being investigated and prosecutors have charged 600 people for taking part in the riot.


Prince Harry took his time to air out his concerns about online platforms being used to spread unwanted messages.

"The internet is being defined by hate, division and lies, and that can’t be right," he stated.

He also aimed at the media and called the spread of misinformation a "global humanitarian crisis".

“I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth,” he added.

“My experience, I guess, has been more pre-social media, around the UK press, who sadly conflate profit with purpose and news with entertainment. They do not report the news, they create it.”

“They have successfully turned fact-based news into opinion-based gossip with devastating consequences for the country."

The royal prince also called out the language used after he and Meghan left their senior royal roles. He cited the term 'Megxit', royal media’s spin on Brexit; the term implicated that Meghan Markle was behind the decision to move out.

"Maybe people know this and maybe they don’t, but the term Megxit was, or is, a misogynistic term," he said during the online discussion.

"And it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media. But it began with a troll."