Kensington Palace officials are asking social media users to stop posting negative comments about Duchesses Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, ABC News reports.
In recent months, the staff at the Palace have reportedly spent a ton of hours managing offensive comments—specifically removing racist and sexist content—on social media aimed at Middleton and Markle.
“The Palace has always monitored comments, but it’s a hugely time consuming thing,” an insider reportedly told Hello! magazine. “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.”
The problem has become such an issue that Palace officials have reached out to Instagram to help monitor the abusive comments.
In response to the rise in hate comments towards the royal in-laws, Hello! launched the #HelloToKindness campaign to encourage a change in how we communicate on social media.
We came up with the #hellotokindness Campaign after noticing a big increase in abusive, sexist, racist and threatening comments left under our @hellomag and personal social media posts – particularly any regarding the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex…
— Emily Nash (@emynash) January 28, 2019
“Comments left under our posts—particularly any to do with Kate or Meghan—have become increasingly hostile—either towards the Duchesses or other users,” said editor-in-chief of Hello! Rosie Nixon. “So we’re asking people to think before they post and say #HelloToKindness. We want to make social media a more positive space for everyone to enjoy.”
Emily Nash, a reporter for Hello!, told CNN that she has also seen an increase in abusive comments directed towards the two.
“It seems to me to be particularly sexist,” Nash said. “You have people comparing them in a way that doesn’t really happen with men—’she’s walking funny, or her heels are too high, or her legs are too skinny’”
This is not the first time that Markle and Middleton have been subjected to racist and sexist comments on social media. After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle confirmed their relationship in 2016, the prince issued a public statement condemning the negative comments directed towards her.
“His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment,” the statement said per People. “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 on social media trolls and web articles comments.”
It continued, “It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subject to such a storm. He knows commentators will say this is ‘the price she has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game.’ He strongly disagrees. This is not a game—it is her life and his.”