Latest news with #TattleLife
Irish Independent
12 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Inside the Tattle Life scandal: The gossipy website that became the ‘most hate-filled corner of the web'
Business owners Donna and Neil Sands won a landmark defamation case against the online platform that tore influencers, celebrities and TV presenters to shreds. But who was behind the vitriol and why did they do it? Kirsty Blake Knox tries to make sense of online trolling It was a friend who first brought Tattle Life to the attention of Irish business owner Neil Sands. Someone on the site had opened a thread about his wife Donna Sands' fashion brand Silkie. 'And what they were saying, you wouldn't repeat,' Mr Sands says.
Sunday World
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
Brian Dowling hits out at 'cowards' on gossip site Tattle Life
The TV presenter previously said users of the forum tried to ruin his life and destroy his reputation. Brian Dowling has hit out at 'cowards' on the gossip website Tattle Life. The television presenter said that he and his husband, Arthur Gourounlian, have suffered at the hands of people who post on the forum. Taking to Instagram, he shared that he never planned to open up 'so much' about his experience, and thanked followers for contacting him about his story. 'Thank you so so much, your KINDNESS & SUPPORT will ALWAYS win over anything else. 'Plus, we aren't alone in this, as many, many other people have had their lives turned absolutely upside down. 'We all need to remember these people are weak, they are cowards and clearly are so unhappy with their own lives that they want to inflict hate on others,' he continued. Brian Dowling 'I'm happy to say the tide is turning!!! Have a gorgeous Thursday, everyone.' The father-of-two opened up about his personal experience with the website last week after the owner was unmasked as Sebastian Henry Bond following a high-profile court case. 'Also on Friday, my birthday, I got messages saying that the person that runs the website Tattle has been exposed and his true identity is now out there.' 'I am absolutely delighted,' he said. 'This is something, a battle, Arthur and I have been having with this website for a long time now. 'They have tried to destroy our reputation, ruin our lives in fact with the vile-ness they have been saying. 'We have all the messages, we've spoken to the guards, we have screenshots, we have usernames, we have everything,' he added. 'My hope is, now this man has been exposed for who he is. 'That, as part of his deal, he will now release the email addresses of all those people online with all their names. 'And I get to find out who they are. I can't wait.' Brian Dowling with husband Arthur Gourounlian at last year's VIP Style Awards. News in 90 Seconds - June 19th It comes after Irish couple Neil and Donna Sands were awarded £300,000 payout by a Belfast judge last December after they were anonymously trolled on the forum. The identity of the website's owner remained a secret until it was revealed following a court battle to lift reporting restrictions.
Daily Record
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Lauryn Goodman slams trolls after social services called on her kids
Lauryn Goodman has spoken out about her horrific experience with notorious gossip website Tattle Life, saying that social services were even called over her kids she shares with Kyle Walker. Reality television star Lauryn Goodman has spoken out about the harassment she faced from trolls. Including some who called social services on her children with Kyle Walker, after being targeted on a notorious gossip website. Lauryn, 34, has been subjected to horrible slurs from "keyboard warriors" on the "toxic" Tattle Life site. The disgraced platform allowed users to anonymously post intimate and private details about celebs and influencers, often spreading and fuelling gossip. The site has caused irreparable harm to both celebs and wide businesses. Those affected by the site include well-known stars like Katie Price, Alice Evans, Stacey Solomon, and Molly-Mae Hague. Tattle Life's founder, Sebastian Bond, has recently been identified after spreading false and hurtful claims about couple Neil and Donna Sands. The couple won a substantial £300,000 libel payout due to a defamatory 45-page thread on the website. Fashion influencer and clothing brand Sylkie owner Donna, and tech entrepreneur Neil, received damages for the harassment and defamation suffered, according to reports in the Mirror. Lauryn connected with the couple on Instagram and formed a WhatsApp group to attempt to identify the individuals responsible for spreading the malicious rumours on the site. Recounting her dreadful ordeal with the site, she told the Mail that it all started during lockdown when she was expecting her eldest son Kairo with footballer Kyle while he was on a 'break' from his wife Annie Kilner. She alleged that Tattle users slandered her, accusing her of being an escort paid to travel to Hong Kong for sexual encounters. As her relationship with Kyle became public knowledge, she explained that Tattle users began directing vile abuse at her kids. "They have called my children so many nasty, nasty things which I don't ever want to say because it's so disgusting. They used terms for children born out of wedlock, horrible terms that you shouldn't refer any child by. "They're so innocent – they're minors and it's sick. I can't understand why anyone would do this to kids. They think they are funny with it but there is nothing funny about it, what have my children done to deserve this? Take away my part in the mess, what have they done? It's a form of harassment." The situation escalated further when she disclosed that social services had been falsely alerted about her, with claims that Kairo and Kinara were not being cared for properly. Confessing her embarrassment, she said: "People from Tattle were anonymously ringing social services. They say it on the website too, things like: 'She's going to be getting a call from social services...' and the next thing, I get one." Lauryn stated that there had been two interventions from social services, which she described as "just horrible". "They say my children aren't loved but they are, they get hugs all of the time and I read a book to them every night," she said. "They said stuff like I don't feed them and when Kairo was a baby they said I was starving him. I mean, I was exclusively breast pumping to give him milk all hours. It was horrible, it was mean and it is totally unacceptable." She then disclosed that Kinara's name first surfaced on Tattle Life, a detail she hadn't made public and had only shared with close friends and family. "Inevitably, it caused trust issues for me. It makes me paranoid," Lauryn expressed. "It gave me anxiety and it changed me. I used to be outgoing but now I'm a nervous wreck." The influencer also voiced her deep concern over how individuals on the site would track her favourite coffee shop locations or other places she visited. She further alleged that her medical records were discussed on the site, along with outrageous claims that she was "off her head on the gear", implying cocaine use. Lauryn denies ever using drugs. She added: "They contact the companies and point out bad things about people and then they get dropped and that means they lose money, this is affecting people's livelihoods and it's not fair." After her widely covered court case with Kyle, Lauryn revealed how the public attention intensified for her. She commented: "I feel like it has impacted me in quite a lot of ways, not just defamation and libel issues but it has contributed to the circus and the narrative of the saga with Kyle."
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The VERY middle-class life of the 'King of Trolls': How Tattle Life creator Sebastian Bond's background is a world away from toxic site he founded
The man unmasked as the creator of brutal gossip forum Tattle Life hails from a very comfortable background in the West Country, MailOnline can reveal. Vegan influencer Sebastian Bond's retired parents, former company director Henry Bond, 76, and his wife Sheila, 75, live in a £500,000 detached four-bedroomed house in Glastonbury, Somerset with no mortgage, official records show. Their plush home was used in documents when their son set up one of his companies, Kumquat Tree Limited, in February 2024. In a historic libel case against Bond, who was found to have run the 'toxic' Tattle Life platform where users could anonymously post nasty and defamatory comments about people in the public eye, a judge said that Kumquat Tree Limited had received money generated from the site. Bond, 41, dubbed 'The King of Trolls', who is believed to be living somewhere in the Far East after losing a devastating libel case, in which damages of £300,000 were awarded against him, is the third of the Bonds' four children. The polite gentility of the middle-class street where the Bonds live is in stark contrast to the often toxic content of their son's website, which is supposedly aimed at exposing disingenuous influencers. It swiftly became a breeding ground for trolls to hurl abuse at everyone from Mrs Hinch and Stacey Solomon to mummy bloggers with small followings. Tech entrepreneur Neil, 43, and Donna Sands, 34, won their historic libel case after suing the founder for 'defamation and harassment' over posts aimed at them on the site at the High Court in Northern Ireland in 2023. It was never clear what motivated the online campaign directed against the couple, which they argued in court was 'hate speech'. The site, which attracts 12 million visitors a month, is supposedly aimed at exposing disingenuous influencers, but it quickly became a paradise for trolls to hurl abuse at them Mr Sands and his lawyers discovered that Sebastian Bond created various online aliases apparently to mask his ownership of Tattle Life, one of which was Bastian Durward, a surname which, MailOnline can reveal, came from his paternal grandmother Chrissie May Durward, who died in 1957, aged 48. It didn't take long to find examples of abuse aimed at celebrities and others on Tattle, which attracts around 12million visitors a month. One poster remarked: 'It's really obvious (and sad) to see that her self worth is directly linked to how skinny she is. The aforementioned manic/attention seeking behaviours evidence that. 'She knows she looks tiny and so she is jumping at the chance (with a totally random narrative) to flaunt it on the internet in the hope she is flooded with comments and DMs from onlookers. 'It's a super sad way to live and she is an abominable and dangerous example to her daughters.' Another piled on with: 'I've seen girls on hen dos look better than her. She couldn't be more (sic) anymore unsexy tbh' Neil and Donna Sands appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday and told hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley about the 'stalking' and 'horrendous feeling' of the 'daily abuse'. Donna, who runs fashion label Sylkie along with other brands and has a 'modest' 20,000 followers, said: 'It impacted me on so many different levels. I would wake up and I would think "what have they said now in the last 7 hours" when I would turn on my phone. My body would actually just shake.' In an effort to 'overcome' it all, she joined Trinity College to do an MBA but when her fellow professionals in class asked her what her business was called she didn't want to tell them. 'Everyone is normally proud of their business and able to say it and the first thing I thought when I started an MBA was "they're all going to google me and this thread will come up",' she said. Her husband Neil, an AI founder, explained how they found 'defamatory details' of their businesses 'that were completely untrue'. The couple said the defamatory comments about their enterprises 'completely misrepresented' everything they do and accused Donna of selling 'poor quality' clothes and 'over-representing' her prices. Neil said the trolls even went down to the 'molecular level' of finding information about their finances on Companies House and posting them on the site. He said: 'It got more menacing overtime and eventually it got into stalking. There was lots of commentary about where we were, who we were in restaurants with, "we are watching you" stuff like that.' But the online stalkers soon turned to in person harassment with trolls telling the couple 'we we can see you in this restaurant, we are looking at you right now'. Obsessive 'Tattlers' even started driving back and fourth past their home and posted details of their house on Tattle Life threads dedicated to abusing them. Donna, revealed how she went from 'someone who has stood on the shop floor since I was 16 years of age meeting people all the time' to being 'completely withdrawn'. In December 2023, the Sands obtained awards of £150,000 in damages each, plus legal costs in mounting the action over what they termed as 'hate speech'. In a ruling at that stage, Mr Justice McAlinden stated: 'A day of reckoning will come for those behind Tattle Life and for those individuals who posted on Tattle Life.' According to the judge, the site had been set up to deliberately inflict hurt and harm on others by allowing the anonymous trashing of people's reputations. 'This is clearly a case of peddling untruths for profit,' he stated. In a complex two-year legal battle funded by themselves, the Sands deployed advanced technological and intelligence methods as they sought to discover who was in charge of the site, reported the Belfast Telegraph. Earlier this week, the defendants were able to be legally identified as Sebastian Bond and the British and Hong Kong-registered companies Yuzu Zest Limited and Kumquat Tree Limited. Yuzu Zest Limited, a UK-registered company controlled by Bond, was placed into voluntary liquidation just weeks after he was hit with a £300,000 damages judgement in December 2023. A resolution to wind up the company was signed on 27 September 2024, and a liquidator was formally appointed the following month. Despite being wound up, Yuzu Zest was named in a High Court freezing order issued in December 2024, as lawyers tried to secure £1.8million in assets linked to Tattle Life's operations. Just weeks after that order was issued, Bond incorporated a second company - Kumquat Tree Limited - in Hong Kong on 22 February 2024. Although his parents' detached home was used in documentation, official mail for the firm is directed to Jinda Outsourcing Co., Ltd., an accountancy firm in Bangkok. In March 2025, the court extended the freezing order to include Kumquat, after financial disclosures revealed it had also received funds linked to the website. The Sands' barrister Peter Girvan argued it was now beyond doubt that Mr Bond operated the site. With reporting restrictions and anonymity orders lifted, further legal efforts are now expected to focus on securing enforcement of the damages award. Other celebrities are also likely to mount their own libel actions.
Metro
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
I'm twice my daughter's age but everyone thinks we're sisters
At 36, Lisa Johnston is double her 18-year-old daughter's age — but people regularly mistake them for sisters, and the mother-of-two even still gets IDed by bouncers. The semi-permanent make-up artist from Glasgow was 17 when she had Alicia, and describes her as a 'built-in best friend'. The lookalike pair have a close relationship, sharing clothes, make-up, and even the same friends, to the point Lisa claims strangers are 'gobsmacked' when they hear beautician Alicia call her 'mum'. 'We've been out a couple of times together at pubs and no one can believe it,' she says. 'They're like, 'What? Are you friends or sisters?'.' Although they often get 'confused' looks while out together, Lisa takes this as a compliment, getting a 'confidence boost' if people question whether they're really mum and daughter. 'That's not your mummy she looks in her 20s,' wrote one user under a TikTok of them, while another said: 'Nah both look as young as each other. Sisters definitely.' 'Who's the mum I'm confused,' added a third. 'People say I look really young, it's quite nice actually,' Lisa adds. She enjoys the idea of having produced a 'mini me', with duo being told they're a 'copy and paste' of each other. 'The more Alicia is getting older I can now see the big resemblance especially when we're doing the videos and things together,' says the mum. 'It is kind of like who's who?' Alicia appreciates how alike they are too, commenting: 'My friends love coming over because my mum is like a friend. They'll just chat away to her. 'There will be times where I'm minding my own business and I'll get a phone call and they're like, 'I'm out with your mum right now'. 'She's part of the friendship group.' The teen isn't bothered by the comparisons — instead finding it 'funny'. More Trending 'As I got older and I looked more like my mum, people were like, 'oh my God, you actually look so similar',' says Alicia. 'We've basically got the same makeup routine and everything. So it's actually good.' Lisa credits her youthful looks to a healthy lifestyle, explaining: 'Fitness and healthy eating is a big part of my lifestyle – I go to the gym five times a week.' She also makes an effort to avoid unneccessary stress, which she believes is a 'big part' of staying so fresh-faced. 'We're all just living life – it should be fun,' she added. 'I don't get myself too riled up on anything.' Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: I never gave up on my Olympic dream – even when fleeing my home MORE: The abortion pills-in-post system needs a serious overhaul MORE: Trolls came for my looks, business and parenting – I want Tattle Life's demise Your free newsletter guide to the best London has on offer, from drinks deals to restaurant reviews.
