Kensington Palace has turned to Instagram for help in dealing with bullying on social media.
None of the key members of the royal family have personal accounts on any major social platform but news about the ‘fab four’ (Prince William, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle) is highlighted by Kensington Palace on its official pages.
With over 1.6 million followers on Twitter and over 7 million on Instagram, the palace sees a lot of engagement from fans of the royal family online – but not all of it is positive.
A palace insider told Hello that palace staff spend hours monitoring comments on posts.
Criticisms about Kate include that she’s “boring” while trolls targeting Meghan have accused her of faking her pregnancy, being too slim and touching her bump too often.
“Some of it is quite serious,” the source said.
“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.”
Instagram has team that works to help accounts with big followings to deal with their audiences.
The palace source also admitted that the rumoured feud between Kate and Meghan has caused hardcore fans to become abusive towards each other.
“Arguments about who looks more appropriate, for example, that turn into personal attacks on other users.”
One follower told another to “drink bleach” during an argument, for example.
