11 hours ago
Irish influencers trolled on Tattle life: ‘They said I'm a bad mum. That I'm ugly. They wrote my address on it'
Earlier this week, Co
Antrim
entrepreneurs Neil and Donna Sands
were awarded £300,000
(€352,000) in libel damages following a defamation and harassment lawsuit over abusive comments posted on gossip website Tattle Life.
Tattle Life describes itself as a platform for 'commentary and critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain'. Users post messages and discuss influencers and others with an online profile, many of whom complain they are being trolled.
A number of
Irish
influencers have been the subject of negative 'threads' on Tattle Life. The judge in the case, heard in
Belfast
, said it had been set up to deliberately inflict hurt and harm on others by allowing the anonymous trashing of people's reputations. The site was revealed on Friday, June 13th, as being operated by UK national Sebastian Bond.
Julie Haynes' Instagram account
Twins and Me
has 218,000 followers. She first became aware of Tattle Life when one of her own online followers sent her a link to a comment posted about her on the site, she says.
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'I was sent a screenshot and then I went on and I was scrolling through the threads, and I was like, what the hell? ... They were saying stuff like I take drugs.' None of it was true, she says.
'Writing stuff like that is absolutely horrific,' Haynes says, but it didn't stop there. Haynes' father died during Covid. 'We had five people at the funeral. Me, my mam, my brother and my twins. And we had a camera set up in the church because we were allowed to do that at the time, and you just basically livestreamed it and family and friends at home were able to tune in. The link then was put up on Tattle Life and every single one of my trolls tuned in.'
Her young son needed to go to the toilet during the funeral, and so she brought him. Comments followed that she had 'walked out of the church' and that the funeral was like 'an episode of EastEnders'. 'Every single move I made' was commented on, Haynes says. 'She's drunk, that's why she's run out of the church. She had to go get sick.'
Julie Haynes and her children Erin Rose and Fionn
Haynes says she has seen comments stating that she's 'a bad mum. That I'm ugly'.
Her mother had breast cancer two years ago and had a mastectomy. Haynes shared her mother's experience with her followers, but because her mother's recovery was deemed quick by some she was accused of making the story up 'for content'.
'They wrote my address on it, saying that 'I'd love to go down Julie's house in X and kick ... her. They write about my children all the time. What they call my kids is absolutely horrific, they screenshot them. I'm so, so upset.'
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Women in Ireland increasingly subjected to online hate and misogyny, groups warn
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Haynes says she has considered taking her children offline. 'No one should be calling these children those names,' she says.
Her social media presence is an income source. 'Only for my social media, I'd have nothing,' she says. 'I'm a single mum … I do all this for my kids. And the only way I can go for [a] mortgage is by working. To earn a couple of bob I do my social media but these trolls, then, are trying to ruin it.'
For brands looking to work with influencers, 'the first thing you do is check Google and the first thing that pops up when you put in my name is all these Tattle threads'.
Louise Cooney
has 250,000 followers on Instagram. She became aware of Tattle Life around the time of the Covid pandemic. 'It has completely changed my life for the last five years. It's something I've never spoken about. It's incredibly traumatising and hurtful. Some of the things that have been said and written, and not having control over your digital footprint in that way, is really upsetting,' says Cooney.
Louise Cooney: 'It's like a free-for-all because no one has put in rules'
'It's made me less trusting of people,' she says. 'It makes me second-guess people's intentions. And it makes me question everything that I do, how I share.' She says it's good to be cautious about sharing.
Cooney stays away from the site as much as possible. She says she doesn't want the upset and stress it causes her to have an impact on her toddler son.
'Once or twice I've had a weak moment ... All it does is upset me. Why do I look? But then, if you know it's there and other people can read it, sometimes curiosity can get the better of you,' she says.
'We grew up in a generation ... we're the first ones doing this, and it's like a free-for-all because no one has put in rules.'
Cooney says some people who believe that comment posted on the internet is anonymous and that they can't be traced perhaps don't realise that 'technology is advancing all the time. And of course it can be traced.'
The experience has had an effect on her mental health: 'I definitely experience anxiety because of it.'
Sisters
Sue Jordan
and
Corrina Stone
have, combined, almost 66,000 followers on Instagram and run the Mums on the Run group on Facebook.
Sue Jordan and Corrina Stone
Jordan first became aware of Tattle Life a few years ago when someone sent her a link to a thread, after she had been on the Elaine show with presenter Elaine Crowley on Virgin Media.
Jordan had kept her job, working in frontline homeless services, very separate from her online presence, never speaking about her work due to its sensitive nature, she says. 'So to have people go on there and say this is what I do, keep an eye out for me, it put me in danger … I never shared that information ever. How dare anybody do that? But then it evolved into calling me an alcoholic. No such thing, never was. This is stuff that could actually affect my real-life job.'
She describes what happens on Tattle Life as 'systemic harassment and abuse'.
Tattle Life has had a 'massive' impact on Stone.
She says there have been posts saying her children have a 'horrendous upbringing' and that they 'hate' her.
'They tried to savage my kids, my older kids, their dress sense, their fashion sense, their choices – everything,' Stone says.
She says she has mostly stopped attending events. 'I think it's because I don't want to put myself out there any more to be slapped down every time. It's constantly in your head.'
'I've stopped going out generally. Other than school runs and groceries ... I've a tiny friend circle,' she says.
