Royal family introduce new measures to protect Kate and Meghan from abuse
The Royal Family have finally done what they should have more than a year ago. They’ve introduced a new anti-abuse social media policy in an attempt to prevent the trolling of Duchess Kate and Duchess Meghan.
Enough is enough
If you’ve ever skimmed the comments of a post featuring Kate or Meghan, you’ll have seen exactly what these new measures are designed to prevent.
There’s Kate vs Meghan comments. There are comments which are blatantly racist. There are comments that body shame the pair. There are comments which critique every facet of the Duchesses and some that assert all kinds of fictitious allegations too – like those that suggest both Kate and Meghan have faked their pregnancies. Sigh.
The palace has had enough and has now obviously allocated resources to moderating the social media posts of their three official handles on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
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They’ll call the cops
Overnight they updated followers with this message: “Today we have published guidelines for interacting with The @RoyalFamily, @ClarenceHouse and Kensington Palace social media channels.”
They attached a link to the full policy which states that comments must not:
- Contain spam, be defamatory of any person, deceive others, be obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive, hateful, inflammatory or promote sexually explicit material or violence.
- Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
- Be off-topic, irrelevant or unintelligible.
They’re not mucking around either, not only will they hide, delete and/or block users who step outside the guidelines, they’re willing to call in the police if things get really nasty.
“We also reserve the right to send any comments we deem appropriate to law enforcement authorities for investigation as we feel necessary or is required by law,” the statement on the Royal UK website states.
Today we have published guidelines for interacting with The @RoyalFamily, @ClarenceHouse and Kensington Palace social media channels. Read in full here: https://t.co/1qdvEoDktd
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 4, 2019
“People are monsters”
Commenters on the Kensington Palace Twitter account were heartened by this news. Not only is it horrible to be the focus of this kind of abuse, but it’s also distressing to read it too.
“People are monsters, it’s sad that those items need to be outlined, it should go without saying,” one commenter posted.
“This is the right step towards all the hatred our respected and hardworking duchesses get,” another royal watcher posted. “Nobody deserves the amount of hatred they get on a daily basis. Especially Duchess of Sussex at this time of her life, pregnancy can get tough with negative content on the daily.”
“This is long overdue,” someone else chimed in. “The endless abuse that you have allowed Duchess Meghan to receive via internet channels is unacceptable. I’m glad that finally you will monitor and curb the hatred on your sites. This is the first step in the right direction. Let’s hope it continues.”
“And now let the blocking spree begin!” another Twitter user said hopefully.
Protecting Meg (and her secret Insta)
This long overdue news comes in the wake of unconfirmed reports that Meghan shut down her secret Instagram account recently because it meant she was exposed to the abuse directed at her on other accounts.
She’s apparently set up the account so she could follow her pre-Duchess life friends and interact with them, but it meant she also had access to the cesspool that Instagram has become … and could check in on the official royal accounts where a LOT of nastiness was going down.
“The hurtful comments appear to have had a lasting effect, and threats made online have impacted the pregnant Duchess,” Elle magazine and others reported.
“She doesn’t feel safe enough to go out on her own without protection. There are certain things she’s extremely paranoid about, such as being physically attacked.”
What a time to be alive, when people can be so unbelievably horrible to other humans without giving it a thought. We hope the royals’ social media accounts will be monitored super closely and that this might spark a more positive tone across social media in general. But it probably won’t. Sigh.
