Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have made their first joint public appearance in three months to spotlight an important issue – and of course, a predominant reaction on the Internet has been vitriolic trolling of the Duchess of Sussex. A reaction that is not only brutal, but incredibly ironic given the message they’re trying to spread.

The couple released a not-even-three-minute video of them surprise calling tech leaders from The Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, who are working to making the future of technology more ‘equitable’, as well as ‘harm mitigation’ through preventing cyber bullying and promoting other elements of online safety.

Harry and Meghan are also calling to congratulate these individuals as recipients of grants from the Archewell Foundation, which are intended to fund online safety projects for young people. It’s the charity’s largest donation to date.

‘Thank you for doing everything that you do, our kids especially are incredibly grateful,’ Harry told Sneha Revanur, founder of Encode Justice a youth-led organisation fighting for human rights and justice in the age of AI, with Meghan adding ‘they don’t know it yet – but they will [be].’

They also spoke with Trisha Prabhu of Rethink Citizens, which is an app that works to detect and stop cyberbullying. Harry praised the organisation’s work in promoting online safety. ‘This is amazing, this is exactly why we do what we do. This is exactly why the Youth Power Fund was created,’ he said.

The video’s duration is 2 minutes and 39 seconds. Meghan looks fresh and glamourous. Wearing her hair smooth and a camel-coloured roll-necked co-ord she’s the poster girl for the ‘latte trend’ (using beige coloured make up products and dressing in neutral tones). Her face is visible for just 19 seconds. And yet, even the slightest glimpse of Meghan has fuelled unnecessary, disempowering criticisms.

Instead of taking note of and appreciating the work the Duke and Duchess are doing and the positive impact it has, critics have gone to wild lengths to pick the video apart. One story employs a body language expert to pick apart if the couple are making enough eye contact, who then claims they are displaying ‘potential tension’. What’s behind it all? It could be simply a contrived attempt to stand up unsubstantiated rumours that have appeared about the couple in the US tabloids.

Others have really studied those 19 whole seconds and claimed they can see alleged ‘botched plastic surgery’ on Meghan’s face, while Prince Andrew’s ex-girlfriend Lady Victoria Hervey has also called the video ‘contrived’ and ‘fake’ on GB News.

GMB’s Ranvir Singh has been criticised this morning for making comments about cameras ‘happening to be there’ for the phone conversations, presumably due to the fact that they were supposed to be a ‘surprise’ to the young tech leaders. But what comments like these really do is casually undermine the moment, that was clearly planned to be filmed, the work that these organisations do and Meghan herself.

It is pure irony that Meghan and Harry are campaigning for online safety and the importance of fighting against cyberbullying – only for them, particularly Meghan, to be subjected to online bullying in turn.

Meghan is putting her name and face to a cause that her and husband view to be important – in 2021, 27% of UK students identified their bullying experiences as cyberbullying – only for people to cyberbully her right back, spitting in the face of the movement she is trying to strengthen and support.

Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of the Royals, or Harry and Meghan, the work that the Duke and Duchess are doing should speak for itself. It’s another indictment of how a woman’s work can never be respected in and of itself, and her face, body and private life always come into play. Meghan’s history and fame just makes this patriarchal double standard even more stark.

What’s more, these criticisms are taking the focus from what’s really important (and what the Duke and Duchess were looking to spotlight) – the work that The Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund is doing to promote ethics within technology. Their mission is to harness tech power for good, limiting its harmful impacts and reprioritising its use to ‘address social, cultural, political, or environmental problems’.

For Harry and Meghan, understanding online hate is sadly nothing new. In their Netflix documentary, online specialist Christopher Bouzy said his company had ‘never seen anything like’ the organised online hate Meghan faces.

‘Bot Sentinel has looked at Q-Anon to MAGA to covid misinformation to climate change misinformation – we’ve never seen anything quite like this,’ he said in the show. ‘We looked at 114,000 tweets and determined that 70% of the hateful content came from just 83 accounts and had a reach of 17m people. So, this is not your average trolling. They were coordinating what they would discuss for that particular day or week, what pictures to disseminate, they were actively recruiting people, telling people how to make multiple accounts. How to use VPNs to hide the VP so they don’t get suspended.’

It’s not the first time Meghan and Harry have shone a light on the importance of safety online outside of themselves – it’s something they’ve always been passionate about. Last summer, at the virtual launch of a global child online safety toolkit hosted by UK campaign group the 5Rights Foundation, Harry spoke of his and Meghan’s concern about the ‘next generation growing up in a world where they are treated as digital experiments for companies to make money and where things like hatred and harm are somehow normalised’.

He also stressed the need for tech firms to protect both young people and adults from harmful online content: ‘We need new laws. We need public pressure. We need strong leadership’.

Harry added that he hopes his own children, Archie and Lilibet, won’t have to deal with the dangers of the online world as it is now. ‘My kids are too young to have experienced the online world yet and I hope that they never have to experience it as it exists now – No kid should have to,’ he said.

‘My two little ones are still of the age of innocence. Sometimes I feel I can keep them away from the online harms that they could face in the future forever but I am learning to know better.

‘As parents, my wife and I are concerned about the next generation growing up in a world where they are treated as digital experiments.’

This is clearly a cause that both Harry and Meghan have been passionate about for a long time. As such it’s disappointing that their attempt to support it publicly has been met with such hatred.

And that when a woman tries to support a cause close to her heart, she is met with trolling comments around her personal life and questioning the validity of her work. It’s disrespectful, and – unfortunately – patriarchy at play.