Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle Receive Shocking Online Abuse Each Week

It has almost become a norm to see the names of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle in headlines of stories claiming there’s a feud between them. Now, it has been revealed that the two Duchesses are receiving a shocking amount of online abuse that Kensington Palace has to spend countless hours moderating each week.

The abusive comments come from their “rival” fans, which include vicious threats and racist comments. According to Hello! magazine, the palace has been monitoring such comments. However, “it’s a hugely time consuming thing. They can block certain words, but some of it is quite serious,” a source told the magazine.

“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 magazine has also observed an increasing amount of these abusive comments toward Middleton and Markle in its own social media channels.

Kate and Meghan do not have their personal social media accounts, with Meghan shutting off her accounts before she got married to Prince Harry last year. Kensington Palace, however, maintains a Twitter and Instagram account for the royals.

Thank you to the children of Edith Neville Primary School for a fantastic performance @NationalTheatre!

Find out more about the NT’s work with primary schools here: https://t.co/DTqiUwOgZy pic.twitter.com/qfj5ZDNuZ4

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) January 30, 2019

While comments left by 7.1 million followers on Instagram and 1.68 million followers on Twitter are majority positive, it still takes time to weed out abusive and negative comments. The Palace has already turned to Instagram for assistance as the social media company has a dedicated to help high-profile accounts monitor such issues.

“It follows a Kate vs Meghan narrative and some of the worst stuff is between Kate fans and Meghan fans,” Hello!’s source added. “Arguments about who looks more appropriate, for example, that turn into personal attacks on other users. It’s creating a supercharged atmosphere and everyone can join in, but what are the consequences of this?”

In line with this, the magazine initiated a campaign that calls for people to change how they post online. The campaign, #HelloToKindness, was launched on Monday.

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“We just decided enough is enough. It’s becoming an unhealthy and unpleasant atmosphere, and we feel as a responsible title we can take a stand and lead the way on this,” Emily Nash, Royal Editor at Hello!, told CNN.