Hello, and welcome to Outspoken. It's your dose of the hottest influencer and pop culture news twice a week. I'm Kate Torber and coming up on today's show, Tattle Lives, founder has been unmasked during a landmark defamation case, and Indy Clinton's quest to end cyberbullying. But first, Amy, you are back. You've ented maternity leave a lot earlier than
I did. Yeah, it's been nine weeks, but it's actually felt like quite a while, and I am so up to date on all of the influencer news and drama because all I have been doing is watching vlog after log while I've been feeding Harry. I remember those good old days. Enjoy it while a last because I'm on no screen time with Jack at the moment and I'm
wishing i could be watching YouTube. Well, it's getting to the point where I'm scraping the barrel because I was watching content from Molly May from about four years ago, and I thought, geez, my favorite influencers need to release some more videos. I started watching Molly May and Tommy Fury's Love Island series when I was breastfeeding. I was like, I'm just going to take it back to the start. Well,
there is a new Love Island coming out. It's playing in the UK moment, so I will be watching that as well. Tattle Life has finally had its day in court, with the founder behind the snark website finally unmasked. For over seven years, Sebastian Bond has hidden behind a veil of anonymity, but that was ripped away on Saturday when an Irish couple successfully sued tattle Life the defamation and harassment. Now that the owner's identity has been exposed, it's opened
the floodgates to further lawsuits. Now this is a landmark defamation case. It is set to shake things up in the influencer world. We have spoken a lot about tattle Life on this podcast, but Kate, for those listeners who aren't familiar with the side, can you bring us up to speed.
So.
Tattle Life is an online gossip forum that claims to hold influences to account. It features countless threads dedicated to discussing individual influences, and since its launch in twenty eighteen, the website has reportedly attracted millions of views every month
and generated millions of dollars in advertising revenue. It's actually become one of Australia's most visited websites, and the website builds itself as a place for commentary and critique of people that choose to monetize their personal life as a business and release it in the public domain. Title Life also claims that its purpose is to protect free speech
and protect the public's mental health. Now, back in twenty nineteen, the owner of the site wrote, It's an important part of a healthy, free and fair society for members of the public to have an opinion on those in a position of power and influence. That is why tattle exists. 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. When somebody has to actually point out this is not trolling, you always know there is going to be trolling involved. It's like when people say no offense and then say something highly offensive. Exactly right, And despite claiming to have a zero tolerance policy towards abusive, hateful and harmful content, tattle Life has become renowned, as
you said, Amy, for just that. It's been touted as the most toxic corner of the Internet, with many influencers complaining that they've been bullied to fame or doxed on the website. And what makes Tuttle particularly dangerous is that users are completely anonymous. There has been so much talk recently about whether people should be able to post their
anonymous thoughts on the Internet. I mean, my view is, if you have to say something under the veil of anonymity, maybe you shouldn't be saying it, because you should be able to put your face and name to whatever you're going to say about someone or something. And we had this discussion recently because in our group, a lot of people started leaving anonymous comments and we found that the tone totally changed, because when people can post something anonymously,
it often turns toxic very quickly. Yeah, and it got to the point where there were some threats where nearly every single comment was anonymously posted. So we turned that anonymous posting feature off and it has been game changing. Yeah, I'm just glad that Facebook actually gave us the ability to turn that feature off.
Now.
There have been countless influencers that have called for Tattle to be banned, and there's been a lot of unsuccessful attempts until now. So two years ago an Irish couple called Neil and Donna Sans took things into their own hands, funding a legal battle against the website. So Donna is thirty four and she has a fashion business, while Neil
is a forty two year old technology entrepreneur. Now I wasn't familiar with them, but I assume that they must be pretty well known influencers in Ireland, seeing as they had a forty five page thread on the website. It turns out though they are micro influencers. So at the time of recording, Donna has thirty thousand Instagram followers, which is likely to have been bolstered by the recent news. As for her husband, Neil, he's only got five thousand followers.
And that's the thing about Tattle, you actually don't have to be a big fish. Some of the threads about micro influencers are just as extensive as the big influencers. Well, that kind of goes against their whole motto, isn't it on their website that you know, you have to be earning a huge living to be able to be talked about on the website. Exactly now, in February twenty twenty one, Donna and Neil Sanm's asked haddle life to remove a
forty five page defamatory thread about them. Now, the website just ignored their request and they allowed the comments to remain live on their website until May twenty twenty five. Now, the SAMs launched legal action against haddle life in June twenty twenty three, and after a lengthy two year battle that they self funded, they were awarded three hundred thousand
pounds as well as their legal costs. Wow, because you would assume, as you said, that it was a big name influencer that would have had the money to be able to launch a legal case against addle life, not some micro influencers. I mean, I got the vibe from the Instagram account that they're quite wealthy. They had their wedding in late Como. That says a lot. But at the end of the day, this is more than about money. This is about standing up for content creators and people
that put themselves online and saying, hey, this is not okay. Well, I think a lot of people on Tattle would be shaking in their boots because during the proceedings, Justice McK adlin said a day of reckoning will come for those behind tattle Life and for those individuals who posted on tattle Life.
Now.
The judge deemed that the website had been set up to deliberately inflict hurt and harm on others by allowing the anonymous trashing of people's reputation. Justin mcadlin called the website's action a calculated exercise of extreme cynicism. He went on to say, this is clearly a case of peddling untruths for profit. I mean that is the key. As you said, this guy has been making so much money having other people trash the reputations of influencers and content
creators and also just micro influencers who owned businesses. Yeah, this guy is making serious bank at the expense of a lot of people.
Now.
During the two year court case, the identity of the owner of tatle Life was suppressed. In fact, it's been a secret for more than seven years, with the owner posting under the pseudonym Helen McDougal. That all changed, though, when Donna and Nil's application to lift the reporting restrictions was approved and their real name was made public on Saturday. As we're revealed at the start of this segment. The owner of Tatle Life is Sebastian Bond, if you can
believe it. He is a forty three year old food influencer who runs a vegan cooking instagram called Nest and Growth. I'm assuming there's no Tato Life thread on him and his content. Funny about that there isn't actually now, he is better known under the alias Bastian Dowwood and has attracted one hundred and thirty five thousand Instagram followers through
his wholesome online persona now. According to the Nest and Glow website, Bond is a former office worker who quit long days in London to move to the countryside and share natural recipes and lifestyle instead of patrol website on the side. Yeah, I mean he's making bank off it. So the funniest thing was when I heard this, I was like, this is the same as when Dan Humphries was unveiled as Gossip Girl. I know, it's just so ironic that it's a make and also that he's an influencer.
I mean, this is the same man who wrote on Tattle that influencer marketing was insidious and that influencers prey on the parasocial relationship that they have with their audience, to quote, houldwink their followers into getting more money. Did you have a look at his page, because I of course went straight to there when I saw the news, and it was pretty uninspiring. He hasn't posted since twenty twenty.
They were sort of ordinary photos of vegan food. Yeah, he'd been posting since twenty sixteen, but as he said, he stopped posting in twenty twenty, which is kind of odd because that's when everyone kind of started posting about food. I was wondering if maybe he bought the followers, because again, the content wasn't that crash hot. It was hard to tell, though, because I went into the comment section and it was literally every influencer and their dog abusing him, which I loved.
Well.
I wonder if he stopped creating content in twenty twenty, because that's when Tattle would have exploded in popularity. We know, when everyone was locked down in their houses, that's when a lot of people would have turned to websites like tatte. So perhaps he stopped because he was making more and more money and he didn't need to be working as an influencer on the side. Perhaps he was scared that he might get found out. I mean, it's pretty hypocritical
to slam influencers and then b one yourself. In terms of him pretending to be a woman, it's so messed up to think it's this man pretending to be a woman and encouraging other women to tear women down well, making so much money off it. It's bullshit and a lot of men would probably look at Tattle and go, oh, that's just a whole load of women having a bitch about other women. The irony that it's a man that's
all behind it. Yeah, I mean, as we touched on, it's reported that the avid revenue he was earning was around a million dollars a year, and that was in twenty twenty one, so I'm guessing it's gone up by then. And that fact alone completely contradicts Tattle Life's claim that it operates solely for this sake of public discourse. What I find really fascinating is more details are coming out
about this investigation that has unmasked Sebastian Bond. So the couple's legal team have said that this was a global in investigation, and it turns out that Bond used his two businesses to try and conceal his identity. So one is a UK registered company called Yuzu Zest, while the other is registered in Hong Kong and it's called coum quat Tree Limited. Interestingly, tattle Life claims to be operated by a company called Lime Goss, which does really fit
with the whole citrus theme. It is not going on. We should have known he was a vegan blogger. There were so many clues I know, and the SAMs legal team have done an excellent job because they had to use a mix of legal innovation and digital evidence to track down Bond and his assets, including money transferred around the world. According to the legal team, it was a very sophisticated effort to avoid scrutiny and it appears the writing was on the wall for Sebastian six months ago.
So back in January, tattle Life shopped its users by announcing it was closing due to threats. The website went down for several hours and returned operating under a new name, eight Cafe, an interesting name. A lot of people said it sounded like the Hate Cafe, which would have been bang on. It could have called it like sour pusses
or something stuck with the citrus theme now. The owner then posted a farewell message, writing, Unfortunately, recent threats directed at members of one of our families have left us with no choice but to shut down the site. It's simply unfair for them to be impacted by something they have zero involvement in. Now, that was pretty ironic. The Sebastian Bond tried to take this moral high ground. You know, when his family was dragged into it, it was terrible.
How about when every other influencers family who has nothing to do with the online world's being dragged into it? Exactly very hypocritical. Now, Unfortunately, that shutdown was short lived, because just twenty four hours later, a Sebastian Bond changed his mind. Under a pseudonym Helen McDougal, he wrote, after further discussions, yet late into the night for some and all afternoon for others, we have decided to deal with
the threats with legal action. As you will appreciate, we won't be discussing the situation as it concerned family members with no connection to Tattle. All matters are with our legal team. He finished up by writing, once again, we apologize for the stress of the last couple of days and hope to see you all back on your favorite threads. Please post on topic on the threads and ignore this whole situation while I was dealt with as not to
jeopardize it. Well, when all this news came out, I went straight to Tattle to see if there was a discussion on Sebastian Bond. Nothing. There was no one discussing it. Oh, so that twenty four to seven moderator that they claimed to have is working for him. Yeah, exactly, well, inimpeccable timing. On Friday night, Indy Clinton announced on her Instagram that she knew the identities of the anonymous trolls who had
been bullying her for years. So a few weeks ago, Indy revealed she'd hired a private investigator to find out who was behind the constant harassment. And so on Friday night, she appeared on camera in a hoodie and black sunglasses with the glass of wine and she was ready to spill the tea and it didn't disappoint Yeah. It turns out that her private investigator had put together a sixty
four page report which unmasked the trolls. Now Indy was unable to name and shame the trolls due to it being an ongoing case, but she did let a few interesting titbits slip. So she dropped that a lot of her trolls are from Melbourne, with many of them mothers. Did this surprise you, Amy, It didn't surprise me at all. I think anytime you see a troll on TikTok or Instagram, often when you click on their profile you'll see it's either a motivational quote about loving everybody and being kind
and then it says like mama of three. So it wasn't surprising. And also because Indy is a mummy vlogger, she would attract a lot of other mums. But I mean, it obviously shocks you a bit to find out that somebody who is looking after children. There's often a perception around what a mother is like they're very caring and kind. To find out that it's actually mothers who have been
trolling Indy for years, it is quite sad. Really, it's sad, and it does make me reflect and think, well, is this a sign of women just having way too much pressure on themsel I was not trying to make excuses for these trolls because their behavior is absolutely awful, but the fact that it is this particular demographic of women who are probably trying to look after kids, trying to have a job, and their outlet is trolling people online,
and it's just very interesting from a psychological perspective. As Indy pointed out, she's like, this is why the cycle continues, because you've got these mums who are sitting online trolling other women. They're teaching their kids then to be bullies in school. And that's one of the reasons why Indy has gone to the lengths of hiring a private investigator
because she really wants this cycle to stop. And she made it very clear that she's quite familiar with who her biggest trolls are, so much so that she said she knows what hospital one gave birth in, alongside their abn and gynecologist name, and as for another, she said that she could relate to them about regretting the tattoo they got when they were eighteen, and that she knew
they went through birth out in twenty twenty four. She also revealed that she's been engaging with some of her trolls platforms just to let them know that she knows who they are, and it was also to give them an opportunity to apologize. Yeah, because she followed some of them and then liked others posts on Instagram and TikTok. Can you imagine your heart dropping? You would be like,
how the hell does she know who I am? I went to India's following list because I thought, oh, I wonder if it will pop up who she's recently followed, maybe some insight into who the trolls are. But I actually couldn't find anyone. I mean, I love this tact because we did something similar. Not that we get trolled at all on the level that Indy Clinton does, but we unfortunately do have a thread in Tuttle Life dedicated to this podcast strangely, and there is someone that posts
a lot in there. They seem to have a real interest in us, and we wait out who they were, so we just blocked them in all of our accounts, and I think they were a little bit confused. And the funniest thing was they had been messaging us all of these complimentary things and saying how well we'd be doing on the podcast. So it's just bizarre behavior. Yeah,
and that's the strange thing. Often people who troll influencers at some point used to be really big fans, so then they know a lot about them and something happens and they completely switch. Now, as for Indy's biggest troll, this is how she addressed.
Them after Melbourne. I mean Victoria, who was there? Oh that's right? Wa? Hello Wa. My number one antagonist is from Wa. How you doing. I probably haven't reached out to you this week because I'm taking to court. I'm just being honest.
Now since the revelation, influencer Watchdog account dutch Minty has shut down. Now, dutch Minty was very vocal in calling Indi out about sharing her children online. It's got a lot of people thinking that dutch Minty or whoever is behind that account, is this super fan that Indy is sewing. Well, you would be in damage control, wouldn't you. I mean, this is a troll's biggest fear being unmasked. And as we said, it's often people that you would never expect.
I mean, some of these women who were about to receive legal threats, they could hold really important jobs. They could be teachers, they could lose their job, but that they could be in healthcare. You just don't know who these people are. Yeah. Now, Indie presented this in a really joking manner and that was to gain traction. But as clear, this is not a joke to her at all. She's spoke in length about wanting to use her platform
for good and to stop cyberbulling. She's also put a lot of her own money into this, and on Sunday she revealed just how much cyberbulling had affected her. This is what she said.
This has gone further than just naming and shaming.
This is.
An epidemic that needs to stop because lives are being taken. And for me, right, let me just put this very clear. For me, a few months ago, what I have endured it was life or death.
This made me so sad because we had Indy Clinton on our show back in December, and she was an absolute ray of sunshine. She was so generous with her time, so down to earth, so easy to talk to. And I mean, we've spoken about Indy Clinton. I feel like we try and be very unbiased, So if we have someone on the show, we're still going to talk about them if they do something controversial in quoteation marks. So we've been pretty open with our reporting on her and
she was so gracious to come on our show. We had a laugh. She was absolutely beautiful personally. She spoke a lot about the trolling as well, that she'd endure it. If anyone wants to go back and listen to it's one of our Christmas episodes. And it obviously does take a toll on people. I think often people forget that influencers are real people and they see their lives online and they don't think that these kind of comments get to them, but they obviously do.
Well.
I think the worst thing about tattle Life is you often see people direct in the comment at the influencers. So in a lot of threads they go, oh so and so like, for instance, Indy, we know you read this, you should do this. Like It's like these people get a kick out of knowing that the influencers are looking
at it, and they're even harsher. Whereas a rich Sebastian Bond claimed that this was a place where people could talk freely about influencers without them seeing it, It's like, well, it's just human nature to want to see what people are saying about you, and it's really hard to not look at threats. Yeah, and I would put it to listeners out there. If there was a page where people were talking about you, would you not be intrigued to read it? And I think everyone would go and click
on it. Now Australian influencers are excited about this revelation. There's been a lot of talk online about it. M Davies shared her thoughts to Instagram, writing the idea that we might soon have the means to identify those who are projecting their own insecurities as online hate is a huge and long overdue shift in this industry. It's fucking refreshing and hopeful to witness slash see online right now.
What's even more disturbing is that so many of these people are parents, laugh out loud role models supposedly, Hey, it's vile. I honestly can't comprehend how they find the time or the desire to spread that kind of toxicity while raising children. Karma has a way of circling back. Always grateful for people like Indy Clinton, Nil San's and
Donna San's doing the work to figure it out. We shouldn't be numb to receiving this bullshit day in and day out, just because we choose to share more of our lives online doesn't mean we deserve to be relentlessly criticized and bullies. Openness is not an invitation for abuse. Think about it anyway, Their time will come. I really enjoyed hearing m Davy's thoughts on this because there has been this blanket rule that if you put yourself out there online, then you have to be okay with people
discussing you. And obviously we have this podcast where we talk about influencer culture and things that influencers do, but we really try to talk about the action rather than the person, and we put our face and name to it, so we're okay with the things that we say, and we can have open discourse if someone like an influencer isn't happy with it. But when you're posting anonymously, there's no discourse there. You don't know who it's coming from.
You can't hold that person to account, and you if you say the most disgusting things that you would never ever say to a person. And I don't think that that is a fair trade off for being an influencer, particularly when you consider how saturated the influencer market is at the moment. There are so many more influences than they were, so nowadays an influencer, some influencers earn you know,
not even minimum wage. Some influencers are just doing it for fun and they are copying so much ridicule that they don't want to put themselves out there anymore. For example, there's I know, there's a TikToker who has a million followers in Australia and you might look at her and go, oh my god, a million followers. She must be making a packet, but she's not because Australia doesn't have the
TikTok creator fund. So I agree, it seems very unfair when you're not even making like a lot of these people are not making truckloads of money that you think that they might be making because you think, well, maybe that outweighs the good outweighs are bad. This person is making a living off it, But it's often that they're earning minimum wage and then being absolutely horn to shreds. Yeah, because a lot of the threads about micro influencers are
just as vicious as we were saying earlier. And I mean, even if an influencer was earning megabucks, it doesn't give people the right to absolutely defame docs and harass them and bully them until their mental health suffers from it. But I suppose the only thing we have to compare it to is how people treat celebrities. And people often say, oh, we can talk about them and say whatever we want because you know, they're living this lifestyle that you could
only dream of. But influencers are not. All influencers are living the life. We've had a discussion about Tattle a lot on this podcast and over the past couple of years, and there's also been lots of chat in our group, and I do want to put it out there. There are some people who do use tattle in the correct way,
where they will actually hold an influencer to account. I mean, there have been cases, for example, Ruby Frankie where a lot of followers of her were concerned about her actions and it turned out to be that she was doing the wrong thing. She's been jailed. So there are instances where Tattle Life has done good. Unfortunately, there are just more people who are using the website as a platform for hate speech as opposed to those people who are
actually using it correctly as a call out platform. Well, I mean, and that might have been its initial intention, but it's just become a cesspool of hate and an echo chamber for everyone who doesn't like someone to get together and literally try and destroy their life now. Leah Atsinas has been vocal about her distaste towards tatle Life before.
When tatle Life looked like it was shutting down back in January, she posted in our Facebook community saying that the site gave her postnatal depression and she actually sadly got to the point where she thought her daughter was better off without her. Now, once the news broke, she wrote on her Instagram story, anonymous bullies deserve to be unmasked because of how fucking embarrassing it is to be one. Imagine your family and friends finding out you bully people
online wild. I'm so glad this is happening. The damage to this site and others did to me when I was my most rule nearly broke me. What a fucking loser. Lily Brown has also spoken up about Tutelelife, despite actually say she didn't know about the website, which I found surprising. She wrote, surely all us creators all band together and take down the rest of the faceless accounts, destroying people's
mental health. It's about fucking time. And she went on to say that over the last twelve months, she's felt herself really pull back from sharing about her life because of these faceless super fans who she says say the most horrific things about her. And she said that she would like to go back to posting more regularly and not feeling like everything she says or does will get
picked apart by these people. I can see why she feels that way, because, as you mentioned, there was a Tattle threat about us, and I think it was really getting into Sophie's head. I don't go and read that shit, but I know she was somebody that would go and have a look and it would make her feel shit. And it does make you second guess yourself when you are putting out content because you think, oh god, am I sharing too much? Is it's going to be ridiculed?
Is it's just fodder for the trolls? So maybe we are going to see if Tattle does get shut down a lot better content. I mean, I've heard someath from Barker talk about it recently. She talks of those golden years of YouTube when everyone was so supportive, and I think a lot of influencers don't share the way they used to share because of this fear. Yeah. I think in order for that to happen, though, social media platforms need to get on board because, as in d Clinton said,
they're doing fucking nothing to help this situation. Like, I mean, it's so easy for people to make up faceless accounts control people. There needs to be some sort of verification processes involved so that you can't create faceless accounts. I mean, this case against hadle life really is a landmark case.
Legal experts believe that this case will set a precedent for future action against digital defamation, and it's only a matter of time before more victims come forward and possibly even create a class action against tatle life, and that would likely push for regulatory reforms in online speech and anonymous platforms. And it really is set to open the
floodgates to lawsuits. I think. Well, the Sans couple who sued tattle Life, they recently shared an Instagram post encouraging creators and influencers to go and save their tattle threads before they get deleted, because they are saying, well, one this site is probably going to go down because as you said, this has set precedence to go and save the evidence before it gets deleted. I actually went on there to start screenshotting ours, and I almost ready to
join the class action. Yeah I am, but I froze because I again, I haven't looked at our threads since I think it was March twenty twenty four, and last time I did, I was heavily pregnant and the absolute lies and bullshit these people were saying about me. I relate to everything that Lea Asinas has said M Davies, and I'm not putting myself on the same platform as them because I'm fucking shocked that we even have a
Tattle thread where bloody nobody's but it hurts. And I literally actually couldn't even screenshot it because I'm like, I don't want to read what these people are saying. It's horrible, But you know what, I will get someone to do it for us, just because. But yeah, I'd happily join that class Actually, imagine how many people that this is going to run into the multi millions, Like it is
incredible how many people have been defamed. I mean, you could go and spend one minute on Tattle and see ten influences be completely and utterly defamed.
Yeah.
Well, now that Sebastian Bond has been on marsially, it's only a matter of time before the trolls actually on the website do Because I'm assuming that as a part of this legal action, Title Life will have to hand over their database. I know a lot of people sign up using a fake alias, but surely with IP addresses, the identities of these people are going to come out now. A further review of this case is scheduled for the twenty sixth of June twenty twenty five, where ongoing enforcement
of the damages and injunctions will be evaluated. As for Sebastian Bond's future, he is facing substantial legal and reputational consequences, as well as extensive financial orders against him and international enforcement underway. I'm very excited to see what happens here. Well, that is where we're going to leave things for today. What an episode to return to. It was a massive episode. Sophie will be absolutely crushed that she was a part of this one, because I think she hates Huddle Life
the most out of all of us. It's a lot of hate relationship, isn't it. Yeah, this podcast was recorded on the traditional land of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Planes. We pay respect to elders past and present and if you do enjoy the show, we will be dropping a subscriber only episode on Thursday, and please don't forget to leave us a review.