Royal Family clamps down on online abuse with social media guidelines

Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace representatives have joined forces and today released guidelines for interacting with the Royal Family’s social media accounts.

The guidelines, the first of the Royal Family has released, urge social media users to show “courtesy, kindness and respect for all other members.”

The three royal households want to create a safe environment for their online community and are asking users to avoid being “obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive and hateful.”

Those that breach the guidelines might have their comments hidden or deleted – and possibly end up blocked.

The palaces will also consider getting the police involved if deemed appropriate.

READ MORE: Kensington Palace forced to act over online abuse of Meghan and Kate

Speaking on the upcoming episode of Yahoo UK‘s ‘The Royal Box,’ Roya Nikkhah, royal correspondent for The Sunday Times says: “We’re about to have the first ever Anglo-American bi-racial child born into the Royal Family and some of the content that we’ve seen appearing on the social media channels belonging to all three households has been of a very sort of racially, extraordinary undertone and I think they’re saying enough is enough, knowing full well that some more of that may very well come to the fore when that child is born.”

The guidelines are the latest move by the palaces to tackle abuse aimed at members of the Royal Family or other users on social media.

Earlier this year, it was revealed by Hello magazine that royal aides at Kensington Palace are spending hours each week monitoring their social media accounts to moderate the sexist and racist comments aimed at the Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Sussex and their fans.

It’s become such an issue that staff have turned to Instagram to help them learn all the tools they need to tackle the abusive comments.