GOOGLE HAS SUSPENDED advertising on controversial gossip site Tattle Life following a potentially landmark win against the company in a recent court case.

Tattle Life advertises 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”.

The site made around £320,000 per year in advertising revenue.

Neil and Donna Sands, a couple residing in Co Antrim, became targets on the platform with numerous damaging and untrue rumours spread upon the site regarding their businesses and personal lives. 

After numerous attempts, beginning in 2021, to contact the operator of the site to request that the damaging commentary present on the site regarding them was taken down, the couple were forced to take legal action in 2023. 

In 2023, they were awarded £300,000 in damages, and this month have been successful in tracking down and naming the previously unknown operator of the site: Sebastian Bond.

The judge described Bond’s business model as “clearly a case of peddling untruths for profit.

“It is the exercise of extreme cynicism — the calculated exercise of extreme cynicism — which in reality constitutes behaviour solely aimed at making profit out of people’s misery.”

Influencers and public figures have come out in their masses against Tattle Life since the verdict. 

Neil Sands today posted on Instagram alongside an image announcing Google’s advertising suspension on Tattle Life: “Thanks to [Google] for taking this step, ensuring that Sebastian Bond no longer profits from pain on the hate site Tattle.Life.”

A moderator in 2019 proclaimed in a post to the webpage: “We have 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.”

The site remains active today.