Gossip website founder facing £2m defamation bill is vegan influencer

Telegraph

6 hours ago

A gossip website founder has been unmasked as a male vegan influencer after nearly a decade of anonymity.
Sebastian Bond, 41, was revealed as the architect of the popular online forum Tattle Life after losing a £300,000 defamation case, in which he was also ordered to pay costs of £1.8 million.
The British businessman has run the website since 2017 under the pseudonym Helen McDougal.
The site encourages its 12 million monthly visitors to share their opinions of those in the public eye, which critics say has allowed for vicious 'trolling'.
Mr Bond, who runs plant-based recipe Instagram page Nest and Glow, was sued by Neil and Donna Sands for defamation and harassment at the High Court in Northern Ireland in 2023. The pair were awarded £300,000.
Mr Bond has now had his anonymity waived after reporting restrictions were lifted last week.
He was also ordered to cover the Sands's legal costs and third-party compliance expenses, which came to £1.8 million.
The pair were also granted injunctive relief to prevent the site from posting about them in the future.
Mr and Mrs Sands, who work in fashion and AI respectively, said they had contacted the site in 2021 to request the comments be taken down and threatened legal action.
Mr Justice McAlinden said in December 2023 that Mr Bond's running of the site 'constitutes behaviour solely aimed at making profit out of people's misery'.
'Zero-tolerance policy'
He added: 'People facilitating this are making money out of it… protecting their income streams by protecting the identity of the individual posters.'
Tattle Life informs users that it has a 'zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful, harmful and a team of moderators online 24/7 to remove any content that breaks our strict rules - often in minutes'.
It adds: 'We allow people to express their views on businesses away from an influencer's feed on a site where they would have to go out of their way to read, this is not trolling.'
'Forced to take action'
Reporting restrictions preventing Mr Bond from being named were lifted at the High Court of Justice in Northern Ireland last week, while his assets were also frozen.
The court was shown a letter from Mr Bond's legal team, sent to one of the plaintiffs, claiming he was the Tattle Life founder but was 'unaware of any legal proceedings against him'.
In an Instagram post over the weekend, Donna and Neil said: 'As a couple we never wanted or expected to undertake this work, however when we discovered the hate site Tattle Life we were forced to take action.
'We are very grateful for your support and hope that this serves as a reminder to those who want to attack others from behind a screen - that the internet is not an anonymous place.
'We will share more soon, but for today, we hope that this news will provide some peace to those affected by online hate and harassment and that the internet can be a safer space for us all. Onward.'
'Anonymous online attacks'
Neil Sands later told The Journal: 'We undertook this case not just for ourselves but for the many people who have suffered serious personal and professional harm through anonymous online attacks on this and other websites.
'We believe in free speech, but not consequence-free speech – particularly where it is intended to, and succeeds in, causing real-world damage to people's lives, livelihoods and mental health. We were in the fortunate position to be able to take the fight to these faceless operators, and it took a lot of time, effort and expense.'