The Royal Family is done putting up with “abusive, hateful, inflammatory” comments on its social media accounts.
The British Royal Family recently released “Social Media Community Guidelines,” to help control its comments. The guidelines arrived after trolls drove Kensington Palace and Instagram to intervene in hostile, bigoted comments posted about Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton.
The new guidelines advise social media users not be “abusive” or “hateful.” Remarks on the appearances of Markle and Middleton frequently appear under posts on Kensington Palace’s Twitter and Instagram accounts.
The family’s social media team has monitored the comments of Kensington Palace’s Twitter and Instagram pages since they launched. However, the Palace staff reportedly requested help from the social media platforms, both of which “offered support.”
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“The aim of our social media channels is to create an environment where our community can engage safely in debate and is free to make comments, questions and suggestions,” the guidelines state.
“We ask that anyone engaging with our social media channels shows courtesy, kindness and respect for all other members of our social media communities.”
The post goes on to add that by engaging with the royal social channels, users agree to the guidelines, which are then laid out.
According to the guidelines:
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.
- Breach any of the terms of any of the social media platforms themselves.
- Be off-topic, irrelevant or unintelligible.
- Contain any advertising or promote any services.
- Previously, Kensington Palace officials said they tended to leave comments that are generally critical of members of the royal family, and only take action against extreme language and particularly racism.
Nevertheless, the guidelines go on to say: “We reserve the right to determine, at our discretion, whether contributions to our social media channels breach our guidelines. We reserve the right to hide or delete comments made on our channels, as well as block users who do not follow these guidelines.”
“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.”
