If you didn’t know that the internet is dark and full of terrors, then welcome – it must be your first time here.

Bit of a warning: if you post anything online, you may end up getting attacked by a host of ‘internet trolls’, who make up for having miserable lives by making the lives of others miserable.

When it comes to trolls, not even the Royal Family are safe. According to HELLO, the staff at Kensington Palace spend hours every week moderating negative comments aimed, for the most part, at Meghan and Kate.

A handful have made violent threats towards the two women, while others are targeting ‘rival’ fans for vicious personal abuse.

A source told HELLO!, “The Palace has always monitored comments but it’s a hugely time consuming thing. 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.”

Neither Meghan nor Kate have individual social media accounts on any platform, so most of the abuse is happening on the Kensington Palace Instagram page.

Kate has been called “boring” and when Meghan made a surprise appearance at the British Fashion Awards… the debate became so abusive. On the day she was announced as patron of four charities and visited one of them, Smart Works, trolls targeted Meghan with a string of criticisms including accusing her of faking her pregnancy to get attention, trying too hard, walking strangely, touching her baby bump too much, and being too slim.

In other words, trolls are trash humans.

The onslaught against women on social media is something that millions experience every day. The difference is that the average woman doesn’t have a team of moderators to filter out the really negative stuff.

We could all benefit from the old adage – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

[source:hello]