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Kensington Palace is trying to stem the flow of online abuse directed at the Royal family with a new set of social media guidelines.
In an unprecedented move, the new rules for all official royal family social media accounts were announced overnight, with a request to show “courtesy, kindness and respect”.
The guidelines include a rule that users interacting on any royal social media account on any platform, be it Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, must not post any messages that promote “discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.”
The guidelines also included a subtle warning that the Palace “reserves 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 strong new measure is no doubt the result of increased drama that has plagued the royal family since Mehgan, Duchess of Sussex married Harry almost eight months ago. It’s not the first time online abuse of Meghan has been addressed; Harry famously confirmed their relationship by issuing a statement asking the public to leave Meghan alone in November 2016.
The statement read, in part:
“[Meghan] has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public – the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.”
Meghan’s Hollywood status, famous friends, bi-racial background and dysfunctional relationship with members of her family, including father Thomas Markle, are factors that have made her a target of online trolls. But it’s also her own family that have levelled abuse at her online; her half-sister Samantha Markle being one of the worst.
Samantha has tweeted that Meghan is a “greedy, arrogant, deceitful fake humanitarian” and a “narcissist” among many, many other abusive claims. Will the policy make her re-think her tweets? TBC.
