Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Body Language Claims Go Viral on TikTok

Meghan Markle has been accused of controlling Prince Harry in multiple viral TikTok videos viewed millions of times.

The Duchess of Sussex has spoken in the past about how she found social media trolling "almost unsurvivable," but much of the debate about her experiences so far has focused on Twitter and YouTube.

Chinese social media giant TikTok, however, reports traffic volumes for content about Meghan and Harry that tower above not only the biggest names on Twitter, but also the print newspaper readership that has so incensed the couple and led to legal action.

One video posted by @the.royal.watcher on the day of Queen Elizabeth II's funeral was captioned "Harry refuses to look at Meghan" and was viewed 24.9 million times, gaining around 244,700 likes.

The suggestion of a difficult moment between the couple came days after they were accused of being too affectionate in public, when holding hands at a vigil in the queen's honor.

By contrast, The Mail on Sunday, which Harry and Meghan have sued four times between them, sells 749,960 copies a day, while its sister title the Daily Mail sells 872,576 issues, according to data reported by Press Gazette for September 2022.

While it's not a like-for-like comparison, not least because each copy of the Mail may be viewed by several people, the huge traffic volumes on the Tiktok videos demonstrate the challenges of trying to manage reputation through suing mainstream media organizations in a world where social media has become vastly more popular.

Videos Accusing Meghan of Controlling Harry

One video by @the.royal.watcher labeled "Meghan's rudest moment to date" was viewed 6.5 million times and shows the duchess ushering Harry away from a conversation at the queen's funeral and was captioned: "Meghan interrupting Harry mid-conversation with charity patrons and dragging him away without even acknowledging them."

A third labeled "Has Harry had enough?" suggests the prince was "getting interrupted" by Meghan "yet again" and was viewed 10.1 million times.

Many videos fit within a narrative about Meghan controlling or outshining Harry, either placing a hand on him, which the account at points refers to as the "Markle claw."

At other points it's alleged that she either interrupts or pushes in front of him at events.

One video from the same account viewed 9.1 million times asks: "Would you dare to interrupt Meghan like her Mum did?"

Other accounts have posted similar theories, and also gained significant amounts of traffic.

One by Ossa TV, labeled "Looks like Harry is fed up with Meg's control," was watched 8.3 million times and liked around 220,200 times.

By contrast, a recent post on Twitter by Piers Morgan about Prince Harry's memoir got 6,288 likes: "Imagine doing this to your family? Urged on by your wife who has already disowned her own family? Then imagine having the brass neck to preach about 'compassion' and call yourself a 'humanitarian'?"

Should Harry and Meghan Care About Viral Tiktoks?

Christopher Bouzy, founder of data analysis firm Bot Sentinel, told Newsweek: "They definitely should be concerned about this content that's been produced and put on TikTok. A lot of this stuff does get millions of views.

"The question is whether it is influencing other folks. We don't have data on that but yes, its definitely influencing some folks. If you're getting millions of views there are going to be a few folks who will be influenced about that.

"The problem with Twitter is that you have so many journalists, you have so many folks that are influential on Twitter. So some times a journalist may see something on Twitter and think it's organic.

"And they will write about it and say there was this hashtag about Meghan Markle and a story is written about it but that was inorganic. It was manufactured and purposefully amplified in order to do that."