Taylor Lorenz Says Palace Has PR Lessons to Learn After Kate's Diagnosis

Kate Middleton's cancer announcement came too little, too late and was completely mismanaged by Kensington Palace -- so says a reporter who knows all about social media.

We talked to Taylor Lorenz Friday on "TMZ Live," where she analyzed the effect Kate's health news might have online -- where all the conspiracy theories and speculation about her condition and whereabouts have been running rampant for weeks now.

Taylor says a reckoning of sorts is happening on social media after Kate came out and told the world about her cancer -- with a lot of people deleting their tweets and posts that were mocking the whole saga. Her coming out has certainly tamped down the speculation.

With that said, TL tells us there are still people that'll have their doubts about all this -- even in the wake of the health update -- and the reason, she says, is because the Palace has botched the rollout of this news ... something she says they should've just started with.

The fact that Kensington Palace appears to have tried to keep this secret and under wraps for as long as they did -- with missteps along the way, including the Mother's Day photo -- has only given skeptics more reason to lean into the theories and gossip about Kate.

Taylor's POV on this is that the drip-drip method of information actually appears to have backfired on the Palace -- and she suggests they should've just done what Buckingham Palace did with King Charles' cancer news ... namely, just come out with it early.

From her position, Taylor feels like the Palace failed Kate in a PR sense ... and that this whole mess could've been avoided if they were just open and honest with the public.