<
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/21/unmasking-the-man-behind-toxic-gossip-website-tattle-life>
"On Friday 13 June this year, a name that many people had been desperately
trying to uncover for almost a decade was finally revealed. In a Northern Irish
courtroom, a former vegan recipe content creator turned internet entrepreneur
from Somerset was exposed as the hitherto anonymous proprietor of a gossip
website named Tattle Life. His true identity is Sebastian Bond, and his
unmasking may have kickstarted the biggest flurry of celebrity lawsuits since
the Leveson inquiry revealed the extent of phone hacking in British tabloids.
Tattle Life is a members-only forum that invites users to create and contribute
to publicly readable threads of what it calls “commentary and critiques of
people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it
into the public domain”. The site itself is monetised via Google adverts and
ostensibly specialises in “calling out” (overwhelmingly female) people in the
public eye, policing them on their online commercial integrity (adverts, brand
deals, sponsorships and so on) and on their lifestyles, specifically their
parenting, marriages, relationships and friendships. In practice, many of its
targets are not by any measure well known – they’re small business owners,
people with a modest online presence. Daily theorising on their personal and
professional lives sits alongside mean-spirited commentary on stars such as
Stacey Solomon, Katie Price, housekeeping influencer Mrs Hinch and huge
vloggers such as Lydia Millen and Zoe Sugg. Northern Irish fashion retailer
Donna Sands fell into the former category and it is she and her husband, Neil,
a former Silicon Valley executive and serial entrepreneur, who have dealt the
heaviest blow to the site since its inception more than eight years ago.
It all began in January 2021, Donna says, when a friend told her she’d heard
Donna’s name come up between colleagues at her office. Threads from a gossip
site were being discussed. Donna, who had never heard of Tattle Life, went to
look and found an extended rally of critical comments that became more extreme
by the page. “I realised very quickly it went from, ‘She’s fat, she’s ugly, her
wedding dress is so tacky’ to, ‘She looks so fat, maybe she’s pregnant’ and
then to, ‘No, she couldn’t be pregnant because she’s actually too selfish to
have a child.’” Comments turned to her women’s fashion business which, as is
common for many independent retailers, Donna sometimes marketed on Instagram.
“Then it was, ‘Oh, she must just buy it all off [low-cost fast fashion site]
Shein and wrap it up in nice paper and send it out to her customers.’” This
false claim was the first thing customers saw when they Googled the business.
“So people lose trust in what the brand is and in the integrity of me as a
business owner,” Donna says.
Soon, the abuse took a darker turn. One Tattle Life user had followed the Sands
to a house viewing, posted their location on the site and told users where the
couple were moving before they’d even shared the news with their families.
Another, a solicitor, approached the couple in a restaurant, said she was from
Donna’s home town, accepted a drink and engaged them in conversation, before
posting an embellished version of what was said on Tattle Life the same
evening. The couple became nervous of anyone they didn’t know well. Neil says,
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I wrote [to Tattle Life] and
said, ‘I’m begging you to take this down.’ I can remember writing those emails
and hitting send and feeling the humiliation of begging somebody to stop
hurting your wife. It was having a big effect on my family. My parents are
elderly and our families have nothing to do with any of this … ” And yet, Neil
says, these family members, hardly “people that choose to monetise their
personal life”, also apparently fell within the Tattle Life users’
ever-expanding remit and regularly featured in their discussions. Neil claims
his pleading emails were stonewalled, as were those of multiple other Tattle
Life victims. “It’s a really important thing that’s not being discussed,” Neil
says. “That when this guy woke up in the morning, he opened his email and a
couple of things would just go through his head, I guess. The first is, ‘I’m
going to ignore those solicitors’ letters. I’m going to ignore the court order
that says ‘persons unknown’ at the top of it. I’m going to ignore the mother
who says that her son has cut himself today for the fourth time because he
can’t put up with another day’s abuse … ”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
