Viewers who eagerly watched the Duchess of Sussex’s latest appearance noticed obvious similarities between her words and comments from a Netflix documentary. Prince Harry’s wife spoke about social media addiction to an online audience in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen Virtual Summit on Wednesday.
During her 15-minute speech, Meghan, 39, said: “There are very few things in the world where you call the person who’s engaging with it a ‘user’.
“People who are addicted to drugs and people on social media.”
Many viewers likened her words to those of statistician Edward Tufte in The Social Dilemma.
Mr Tufte says in the documentary: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”
Viewers took to Twitter to offer a scathing review of Meghan’s latest public appearance.
One person accused the mother-of-one of “ripping off” the Netflix show which explores the rise of social media and the damage it has inflicted on society.
One viewer said: “So Meghan paid to speak again for Fortune and ripped off the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma theory about social media users being like drug addicts and had the cheek to say she hasn’t been on it [social media] for four years?”
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Meghan’s appearance at the online summit comes as a source said the Sussexes would not return to the UK for their first Christmas since leaving the Royal Family.
Vanity Fair quoted a source on Thursday saying Meghan, Harry and one-year-old Archie would be staying put in California due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The insider said: “Global travel has been made very complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and at the moment the duke has no plans to travel back to the UK, certainly not before Christmas.
“The problem is if he comes over then he has to quarantine and that makes things quite difficult.”
Reports suggest Meghan is planning on making a trip across the pond after Christmas for her court case against the Mail on Sunday newspaper, which kicked off last January.
The mother-of-one is suing the publication for breach of copyright after it carried parts of a private letter she wrote to her father Thomas Markle on its website and newspaper.
Meanwhile Meghan and Harry have been enjoying private date nights in their new neighbourhood of Montecito.
The pair often team up with other couples for double dates but also like to spend one-on-one time during romantic evenings, a source told People magazine.
The source said: “Sometimes they do solo dates and sometimes with friends.”
