Kate, William and how paps turned into apps

William, Prince of Wales, and Catherine, Princess of Wales. Picture: Chris Jackson/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Over the weekend Princess Catherine of Wales – better known as Kate Middleton – sat in front of a camera and revealed she had cancer.

And then followed a wave of guilt and apology from a tiny few of the millions of people who’d used social media to demand #whereskate since she was admitted to hospital in January.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, where the lies and conspiracy theories had flourished for months, the company’s chief executive Linda Yaccarino tweeted: ‘A brave message delivered by Princess Kate with her signature grace.

‘Her request for privacy, to protect her children and allow her to move forward (without endless speculation) seems like a reasonable request to respect,’ wrote Yaccarino.

That’s nice, isn’t it?

But what the social platforms say and what they do are two different things.

When I search X – Yaccarino’s platform – for the hashtag ‘Where’s Kate’, I find more than 1.6 million posts, starting with these:

“So. That chick isn’t Kate. What’s going on?”

“Omg look at her ear … it’s a complete different shape to the real Kate!”

Over at TikTok, here’s what the Chinese-owned app said in a recent statement.

“Our recommendation algorithm doesn’t ‘take sides’ and has rigorous measures in place to prevent manipulation. The content people see on TikTok is generated by our community and recommendations are based on the content people have previously engaged with. TikTok does not ‘promote’ one side of an issue over another.”

But when I search TikTok, I see 48.7 million people have viewed videos tagged #whereskate, and, when I click through, this is what I’m served first:

“This Kate Middleton video is fake and I’ve got proof to show you guys this is actually AI and not Kate.”

“You know what AI is really bad at? Teeth. Kate’s teeth keep jumping around in this video … it’s not Kate.”

“Exactly where is her ‘loving, caring’ husband right now?”

The Daily Mail.

The Mirror.

On Instagram, owned by Meta, below the Prince and Princess of Wales’ own post, there were thousands of supportive comments – and a few like this:

“Catherine is a narcissistic person and only cares about her appearance. It is just karma and a scourge from God.”

And on Facebook, also owned by Meta, the search term Kate returns lots of supportive posts, and then, after less than a minute of swiping, I’m served a video of an enraged Prince William on a pushbike in the countryside, pointing his finger at a photographer who’s capturing the whole exchange on video.

“You’re out here looking for us,” William says.

“You drove past us up at our house,” says Kate, off camera, “I saw you.”

The photographer denies it: “I just realised who it was, I promise you, I have not been near your house, I just walked up.”

William says: “You are stalking around here looking for us and our children. You’re outrageous, you’re disgusting, you really are. How dare you behave like that?”

The exchange ends with William calling security and saying: “I thought you guys had learned by now.”

That’s the point. You haven’t seen this video on any TV stations or reputable media websites, because 27 years ago the death of Princess Diana fundamentally changed how the legacy media deal with the royals.

Diana’s death – chased into a Paris tunnel by paparazzi on motorbikes – was a direct result of the British press creating a white-hot market for images and footage of Diana.

If the papers didn’t buy the shots, the hundreds of paparazzi whose income was derived from stalking Diana would have moved on to another target.

Back then, the paps argued Diana was sometimes a willing participant, backchanneling information about her whereabouts and staging showpiece moments for the cameras.

But neither she nor the Royals consented to the gross invasions of privacy that flowered: blagging, hacking, paying ‘friends’ for information.

In 1998, the UK’s Press Complaints Commission overhauled its editors’ code of conduct, including banning the publication of any material derived from ‘persistent pursuit’ by photographers, harassment and long-lens photography into places that could reasonably be considered private. There were even stricter rules about the privacy of children, aimed at protecting the young princes.

Deep in shock at what they’d created, the British press effectively demonetised the hunt.

That’s why you don’t see pap shots of Kate, William and their kids on Saturday bike rides in the papers or on the TV.

Now the hunt has been remonetised by Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, where ‘content creators’ build their audiences, and their income, with outlandish and fabricated nonsense.

There’s no incentive to be reasonable if your object is virality.

All these platforms say they don’t manipulate the algorithm to serve conspiracy content – the algorithm just serves audiences more of what they like.

In other words, they’ve lost control of their own creation.

It’s 1997 all over again.

 

Claire Harvey is The Australian’s editorial director and host of our daily news podcast The Front. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in The Australian’s app.