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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Marina Hyde

The internet’s nastiest gossipmonger has been exposed and guess what – he wants his privacy

A man and a woman sitting at a table.
Donna and Neil Sands, who won a landmark defamation case against Tattle Life, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, 17 June 2025. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock

With as much as two weeks to kill before nuclear winter sets in, many of you will be looking to road-test your new fallout suits. In which case: can I interest you in the sensational unmasking of the founder of Tattle Life? It turns out the guy who operates the radioactively toxic gossip forum is a “vegan influencer” – I think it’s one of those new types of job, dear – and his name is Sebastian Bond. From that professional description, Sebastian would never hurt a living creature – unless it’s a mummy blogger, in which case he would gut her like a pig. Metaphorically, of course! Sorry, but that is simply the price you pay for not declaring the nappies you’re unboxing on Instagram are actually sponsored.

But I’m racing ahead. If you’re not familiar with Tattle Life, it’s an online forum that claims to be “a commentary website on public business social media accounts” – much in the way the torpedoing of the Lusitania was a commentary on the commercial cruise business. At one point Tattle Life was said to have 12 million monthly visitors. Which, to put it into context, is more than the Times and Sunday Times website gets, and considerably surpasses the visitor numbers of something like GB News. The other thing Tattle Life says about itself on its homepage is: “We have a zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful or harmful.” This is a little bit like the Racing Post saying it has a zero-tolerance policy for stories about horses, greyhounds or sports betting.

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