Prince Harry, Meghan Markle support 'Stop Hate for Profit' campaign

The Duke and the Duchess of Sussex are supporting a campaign against online hate speeches. The initiative backed up by human rights organisations happens to be one of their latest concerns along with their other causes close to their hearts such as mental health that they have been supporting for years.

According to Harper Bazaar, a spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced the couple's participation in the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. The initiative calls for a boycott of Facebook advertising over the company's failed attempts at appropriately dealing with "hateful" and "racist content" on the social media platform. The campaign also is concerned about the misleading content on the online community that has become the cause of misinformation among its users.

As the couple is on their way to developing their new non-profit organisation Archewell that they announced earlier this year, they are urging CEOs of organisations worldwide to stand in solidarity and bring the change.

"As we've been developing Archewell, one of the areas The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been keen to address is online hate speech, and we've been working with civil rights and racial justice groups on it," a source close to the couple said. "Over the past few weeks, in particular, this issue has become even more vital and they have been working to encourage global CEOs to stand in solidarity with a coalition of civil and racial justice groups like the NAACP, Color of Change, and the Anti-Defamation League, which are calling for structural changes to our online world."

It is said that the couple has spent some time in "working on how to move the tech industry in a more humane direction–this includes their longstanding advocacy for supporting mental health in the social media era, which was a key focus of a visit they convened at Stanford University back in February, and is also fundamentally connected to what they are building into their new organisation Archewell."

The news comes after the couple showed their support to the Black Lives Matter movement that was started after the death of George Floyd, who was killed in police custody on May 25.

According to Fox News, the president and CEO of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson publicly thanked the couple for their support to the cause with a message that reportedly reads: "Thank you for emboding [sic] the kind of leadership that meets the moment," read the message. The @NAACP deeply values your unwavering support to #StopHateForProfit."

Stop Hate for Profit was launched on June 17 in response to Facebook's long history of tolerating misinformation and misleading content on its community and making no meaningful attempts to address it. For the campaign, ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press and Common Sense have created a coalition that is calling out the world's largest corporations to pause advertising on Facebook in the month of July 2020 and send out a message to the online community about the negligence and complacency that they have shown towards "hateful content" on its platform.

"It is clear that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer simply negligent, but in fact, complacent in the spread of misinformation, despite the irreversible damage to our democracy. Such actions will upend the integrity of our elections as we head into 2020. We will not stand for this. While we recognize the value that Facebook provides in connecting people of color with one another, we call into question a platform that profits from the suppression of Black votes or Black voices," said Johnson in a statement.