, it is now TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, who are in the dock. This weekend thousands of individual users have expressed contrition over the conspiracy theories they aired and the boss of X herself tried to reposition her platform by urging compassion.
Speculation about the whereabouts and wellbeing of Catherine, in the face of repeated contradictions from Kensington Palace, took place chiefly on social media in this country. While British newspapers showed restraint, phones lit up with conspiracy theories – and foreign print and TV news journalists joined in.“Kategate became a cottage industry of clickbait online because it was a mystery, which invites audience participation,” said writer Helen Lewis of the.
“It is the wild west online, partly because of the anonymity,” said Boycott. “But Kategate has been horrid and I don’t understand it, except that it reveals this strange thing we have about feeling we own celebrities.” The Observer view on The Princess of Wales: calm and courage amid a family already beset by crises | Observer editorial“Some people were doing all this with self-aware irony, but other people presented themselves as trying to ‘save’ Kate, in a way that was reminiscent of the stories around Britney Spears – and again, that’s someone who apparentlysending coded messages about her conservatorship through her Instagram captions. So the idea isn’t completely ridiculous.