[3] The scandal was reported in the media on February 8, 2019, when Checknews, a fact-checking service of the French newspaper Libération, published an article about the Ligue du LOL.
[4][5] A dozen victims were interviewed, and denounced the mobbing behavior of certain members of the Ligue du LOL and their audiences on Twitter.
[7] The "Ligue du LOL" is the name of a private Facebook group created in 2009 by journalist Vincent Glad [fr],[8][9][10][11][12] which was made up of approximately fifteen men and two or three women.
[13] Over time the Ligue du LOL grew to approximately 20 to 40 persons, mainly early users of Twitter, most of whom worked in communication, journalism, web, and advertising.
After the scandal erupted in February 2019, group members defended the Facebook page by claiming that it allowed them to exchange findings on the web and to share jokes and advice.
[13] Group member Henri Michel stated that this page was intended to allow participants to make jokes that could not have been made in public.
[5] A subset of the Ligue du LOL members are accused of harassing other users of Twitter, either individually or as a group, using public and anonymous accounts.
Florence Desurol attempted to complain about the Ligue to Slate and to Gilles Klein from Arrêt sur Image at the beginning of 2010, after receiving an insulting message from Alexandre Hervaud.
[26] In May 2018, journalist Alexandre Léchenet, professor at the ESJ in Lille published a blog post describing his realization that his own behavior might have been problematic.