The British royals have well and truly entered the 21st century with their latest move.
In a surprise statement, the official royal family website has published new guidelines on how to interact with the royal family’s social media accounts.
They ask that “anyone engaging with our social media channels shows courtesy, kindness and respect for all other members of our social media communities”.
The three sites they are referring to are The Royal Family (the Queen’s official account), Clarence House (the official account for Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla) and Kensington Palace (Prince William, Duchess Catherine, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s channel).
The royal family website went on to say that comments to any of these channels 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.
They also made it clear that they can hide and delete comments where they see fit, as well as block users and even bring in the police if necessary.
READ MORE: The best snaps from Meghan Markle’s now deleted Instagram account.
Duchess Catherine and Duchess Meghan have been at the centre of the royal online trolling. (Images: Getty Images)
This move from the palace follows reports that the staff are spending hours each week moderating sexist and racist comments directed at Duchess Catherine and Duchess Meghan.
While Duchess Catherine has been labelled “boring”, royal mum-to-be Duchess Meghan has been accused of faking her pregnancy for attention, holding her baby bump too much, trying too hard and even walking strangely.
“The Palace has always monitored comments but it’s a hugely time consuming thing,” a royal source told HELLO! back in January.
“They can block certain words, but some of it is quite serious. Over the course of last year, with hundreds of thousands of comments, there were two or three that were violent threats. You can delete and report and block people and the police have options around particular people. It’s something you have to manage because there’s no other way to control it.”
WATCH: Duchess Meghan cradles her baby bump at the British Fashion Awards. Post continues…
This isn’t the only time the palace has spoken out in defence of the royals this week.
On Monday, Kensington Palace slammed an article published in Vanity Fair that said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex plan to raise their first-born in a “gender-fluid” manner.
While the article noted that there are “multiple possible interpretations” behind the claims, a Kensington Palace spokesman said on Saturday: “This story is totally false.”
