You would like to think that the haters and the conspiracy theorists  felt sick to their stomach when the Princess of Wales went public with her cancer battle. 

No, it wasn’t a Brazilian bum lift. No, it wasn’t an affair and yes it was her at the farm shop at Windsor. 

I am not sure there is anything that can be done per se, but if you read the Australian E-safety Commissioner's report out last week Julie Inman Grant describes just how astonishingly relaxed the social media giants are when it comes to the filth they allow on their platforms. 

Somewhere along the way we have decided free speech trumps all. Worse, the people who run the platforms have decided making money out of it is good business, while at the same time pretending they care and are working hard to be decent corporate citizens. 

There are questions too I would have thought, to be answered by every advertiser, and that includes local advertisers in New Zealand, who spend millions on platforms that are largely unregulated and pedal the worst of us. How do you defend putting your product and brand next to the sort of muck so readily available on your nearest screen? 

The Commissioner's report dealt a lot with paedophilia and criminal activity. The Princess of Wales doesn’t fall anywhere near that. Indeed, the sort of behaviour we have seen isn't even illegal, it's just stupid and nasty and low rent. 

But it is a lesson in the human condition. When left to our own devices, collectively, we aren't up to much. 

If I have one criticism of the family, the quid pro quo of who they are is there is engagement with the public and once you have set the precedent you can't manipulate it to suit your circumstances. The relationship is built through good times and bad. 

You can't put out the Christmas message, then vanish. Look what happens. So they would have been wise to say earlier what they have finally got around to saying. 

That doesn’t make the vacuum that got filled with filth right. But it is a two way street. 

The King was praised for his forthrightness and the help and comfort it would bring to millions of fellow sufferers. The Princess will now most likely achieve the same thing. 

But the King doesn’t have young children and the King doesn’t have the bulk of his life ahead of him. So you'd be heartless not to have given the Prince and Princess the room they needed to navigate what, for the rest of us, is often a deeply shocking and difficult time. 

As much as they could have got out earlier with this, you were left with the impression they got flushed out by the onslaught of sheer horribleness that pervades too much of the social landscape.