Royal Family issues new rules for social media engagement

The family released a set of guidelines for anyone engaging with their social media channels on Monday, 4 March, banning any “obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive, hateful” and discriminatory posts.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, are frequently the subjects of racist and sexist comments on social media which prompted Kensington Palace to ask social media firms for help in tackling the issue in January.

The royal family said it reserves the right to delete comments, block users and report posters to police if their contributions do not meet their guidelines. They also state that comments must not be off-topic, irrelevant or unintelligible.

Read the statement:

“By engaging with our social media channels you agree to follow these guidelines.

“Comments 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.”

Going further, they also included:

“Breach of guidelines

“We reserve the right to determine, at our discretion, whether contributions to our social media channels breach our guidelines. We reserve the right to hide or delete comments made on our channels, as well as block users who do not follow these guidelines.

“We also reserve the right to send any comments we deem appropriate to law enforcement authorities for investigation as we feel necessary or is required by law.”