When Elon Musk opened the birdcage, the Wokest twits flew straight into the waiting prison cell of hard-left-leaning social media platform Tribel.
At least, that’s what they keep promising to do. Twitter is awash with blue-ticks insisting they are going to close their accounts after they’ve accumulated some tearful attention. They’re all still there.
To sweeten the transition, Tribel has decided to prove that it takes the safe-space industry seriously by preemptively banning former US President Trump and current Twitter overlord Elon Musk – even though neither has expressed a desire to join.
Social media is a lucrative industry. There are 4.7 billion(ish) users in the world, of which Facebook commands the lion’s share followed by YouTube. Twitter comes in at 14th place however, it leads the pack on ‘live news’ which means that Twitter’s influence punches above the body of its user base. It fills the role of the Medieval Town Crier, shouting at the rest of the internet. As far as news platforms go, Twitter has no equal.
If you haven’t heard about its rival Tribel, don’t worry. Tribel has been around for a year and barely made a dent in the social media market. The site’s founder, Omar Rivero, is also responsible for the embarrassing Occupy Democrats account on Twitter (which Musk hasn’t banned).
In a Tweet last week, Occupy Democrats wrote:
‘BREAKING: New pro-Democracy Twitter alternative @TribelSocial announces that it has preemptively blocked Donald Trump, @DonaldJTrumpJr, and Kanye West from its social network, citing their “spreading of dangerous conspiracies and fake news”. RT IF YOU SUPPORT TRIBEL’S DECISION!’
Yes… The ‘pro-democracy’ social media hatchling is looking for people to congratulate it on banning the former President of the free world. Maybe it’s a parody platform run in secret by the BabylonBee?
Incidentally, it was Twitter’s banning of the BabylonBee that led directly to the liberation of Twitter. Musk decided that a social media entity unable to handle a bit of comedy needs to be urgently reformed for the good of humanity – and by gosh do the Left hate the sound of laughter.
In response to Tribel’s demand for public congratulation regarding its recent banning of accounts that don’t exist – which is a bit like Stalin narrowing his eyes at his applauding party members, daring someone to stop clapping first – Twitter users have been quick to make fun of Tribel’s authoritarian terms of service.
One screenshot of Tribel’s terms of service reads:
‘Use of Posted information: In exchange for use of the Website, you hereby grant to Tribel an unlimited, perpetual, irrevocable, fully-paid, transferable, assignable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, commercially exploit, repurpose, perform and display any and all Posted Information, including personal information…’
Which doesn’t exactly sound – uh – safe?
Tribel quickly trended on rival platform Twitter, forcing the new social media platform to back down faster than PayPal.
‘Hi! We removed that part from our terms of service a couple of days ago. We really have no idea why our former lawyer put that in there, and we should have checked his work more carefully. We would never “sell” any user posts – whatever that means! We’re political activists.’
Sounds like the platform was guilty of a bit of fake news and misinformation – but I do credit them on the admission that they’re actually political activists.
The Post Millennial went a bit harder on the infant tech company, floating the idea that maybe Tribel is a data-gathering exercise for Occupy Democrats and Rivero, given that it’s essentially a honey trap for their potential ideological customers.
While Tribel is busy onboarding sobbing Leftists with bruised feelings after suffering through two days of verbal retaliation from conservatives (who have finally had the duct-tape ripped off their mouths), Elon Musk is tweeting ‘scary’ things like:
‘Finally, the truth that carbs are amazing can be said on this platform! #FreeSpeech.’
‘Fresh baked bread & pastries are some of the great joys of life.’
‘Comedy is now legal on Twitter.’
Tribel simply isn’t growing at the rate required to worry Twitter. Like other social media platforms that tried to usurp the blue bird, it is nearly impossible to force a comfortable customer base to move. Only a genuinely better product has the power to clear the room.
That hasn’t stopped Omar Rivero (using Twitter?) to complain:
‘Trumpers & Elon Muskers are flooding my inbox with racist threats because I’m the Founder of @TribelSocial. Apparently, it’s driving them nuts that I’m a Mexican immigrant who created a fast-growing, pro-democracy [sic] Twitter alternative. If you have my back, please RT & join Tribel!’
Which is a pretty weird advertising flex. Rivero should try being a conservative woman on Twitter for five minutes under the tyrannous reign of left-wing content moderators who saw ‘no problem’ with death threats filling the inboxes of women who dared to say hateful things like ‘men competing against women in sport is cheating’.
The pinned tweet on Tribel’s Twitter account (don’t you love how they are grifting off Twitter’s superior customer base?) reads:
‘To all of the Trump supporters who are accusing us of “censoring” them on our new social network: we don’t censor any posts. Our algorithms simply filter out fake news, bigotry and hostility. If you want to trend on our network, your posts must be factual and free of bigotry.’
In other words, Tribel embraces speech and truth the same way that Stalin, Mao, and Hitler did – with their feelings – and by accusing its users of the speech it weaponises against its corporate competitors. After all, is there anything more ‘hostile’ (to use their words) than accusing users of being ‘hateful, lying, bigots’ without offering any proof and then telling people to ‘subscribe’ – essentially – if they also hate this group of people?
Tribel gave the world a working example of their moral logic and censorial power when Libs of TikTok set up an account to state an established biological fact ‘men cannot get pregnant’ and received a near immediate gloating message from Tribel:
‘That was quick. Your transphobic posts were quickly suppressed by our system – and then we at @TribelSocial network gave you a swift boot. Take your bigotry back to Trump’s Truth Social or @kanyewest’s Parler.’
So much for Tribel being interested in ‘truth’ or facts. On Tribel – the virtuous authority on absolute ‘truth’ in modern society – men can get pregnant. Or else you’ll be banned for transphobia.
At least Tribel gives us a preview of what the public forum looks like when Democrats get to enact their wildest ‘free speech’ fantasies. Most would call it a Stalinesque hellscape that resembles the ideological grime scraped off the shovels in Mao’s death camps.
Just for fun, here is a passage that hasn’t aged particularly well from Occupy Democrats – the self-appointed arbiters of truth and fact…
‘Since the coronavirus crisis began in Wuhan, China, American conservatives and imperialist liberals have worked relentlessly to politicize the pandemic and turn it into an indictment of the Chinese Communist Party. In doing so, they have dragged WHO into the mud for its work in China, accusing them of helping the Chinese government “cover-up” the extent of the pandemic by using the data provided by the Chinese government and clutching their pearls over WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s praise for China’s harsh but effective containment efforts.
‘But the World Health Organization operates on the principle that every life in every country is of equal value and they will do whatever they need to do in order to save the most lives it possibly can.
‘If that involves not recognizing the independence of Taiwan and treating the Chinese government with something other than open hostility then they will do so, if it buys them the continued cooperation of the Chinese government.’
Pro-democracy starts with free speech.
Free speech weeds out lies and misinformation through the noise of debate.
When Twitter was controlled by ideological censors, open lies were normalised as fact – such as pregnant men. The Left are furious about Musk’s Twitter purchase because their era of misinformation is at an end.
Free speech will sort this mess out pretty quickly, but will fringe activism survive the revolution?
I doubt it.
