Tattle Life
Tattle Life is a gossip website which purports to provide "commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain", focusing on personalities in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland.[1] The website was founded in 2017[2] and as of June 2025[update], totalled 12 million visitors a year.[2]
It has long been controversial, widely viewed as a platform for online shaming, specifically against women.[3][4][5] People on the website post threads that criticise media personalities' weight, relationships, parenting styles, or businesses. Although most site users post anonymously,[1] they have also published private and identifying information about individuals in these threads, which has led the targeted individuals to fear for their safety.[6] These forums can be read by anybody and appear in Google Search results.[7]
In 2023, Northern Irish[8] business owners Donna and Neil Sands were awarded £300,000 in damages (£150,000 each) by Mr Justice McAlinden sitting at the High Court of Northern Ireland, after the site published threads containing false and defamatory claims about them. This was the largest damages award in Northern Ireland.[1] McAlinden criticised the site's business model as one that "peddles untruths for profit" and said that a "day of reckoning" would come for Tattle Life and its userbase.[1]
Following this ruling, the couple hired private investigation firm Nardello & Co. to locate the identity of Tattle Life's operator. Peter Girvan, who worked for Nardello, served a statement of claim on any "person or persons unknown operating under the pseudonym Tattle Life", noting that the website was not registered with the Information Commissioner's Office nor HM Revenue and Customs in the UK, despite making approximately £320,000 per year through online advertising. A linguistic analysis was also undertaken by the firm, who found textual similarities between Tattle Life's owner and a vegan social media influencer who went by the name Bastian Durward.[2]
In June 2025, the High Court of Northern Ireland removed reporting restrictions and the website's owner was identified as Sebastian Bond (the same person as "Bastian Durward") who operated under the pseudonym "Helen McDougal" on the site. Bond ran the website through two of his companies: Yuzu Zest Limited, registered in the UK, and Kumquat Tree, based in Hong Kong.[1] The website's lawyers denied this, saying it was run through a company and not by Bond, though he has acknowledged being its founder. The website's lawyers denied any wrongdoing and justified the thread on the Sands family, although they removed the thread following the verdict.[9] Donna and Neil Sands posted on Instagram that "the internet is not an anonymous place" and a number of targeted media personalities spoke out in support of Donna and Neil Sands.[7][10]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e Moore, Aoife (13 June 2025). "Identity of Tattle Life publisher revealed as Irish couple wins £300k damages in legal battle". TheJournal.ie. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ a b c Moore, Aoife; O'Carroll, Sinéad (19 June 2025). "The full story of how the operator of gossip site Tattle Life was unmasked in an Irish court". TheJournal.ie.
- ^ Kale, Sirin (24 November 2021). "'People are nasty as hell on there': the battle to close Tattle – the most hate-filled corner of the web". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ Walker, Gail (21 June 2025). "Why we all should be grateful to these two NI entrepreneurs for their brave legal bid". Belfast Telegraph.
- ^ Mac Cabe, Rosemary (21 June 2025). "Rosemary McCabe: How the gossip website Tattle Life nearly broke me". The Irish Times. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ Bond, Kimberley (17 June 2025). "Tattle Life exposed: Meet the people who took down the toxic gossip forum's secret publisher". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ a b Healy, Racheal (21 June 2025). "The battle of Tattle: gossip victims call for website that abuses influencers to shut". The Observer. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ Based in County Antrim:
- Erwin, Alan. "Tattle Life gossip website operator named after couple awarded £300,000 libel damages over posts". The Irish Times. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- "Tattle Life: County Antrim couple awarded £300k in legal battle". BBC News. 13 June 2025.
- ^ Ledwith, Mario (20 June 2025). "How one couple unmasked the biggest troll on the internet". The Times. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
- ^ Thompson, Sophie (18 June 2025). "Which content creators have spoken out since the identity of Tattle Life was exposed?". indy100. Retrieved 21 June 2025.