Tribel1 is an alternative to Twitter and, to see what it was like, I joined up.
The setting up of an account is clunky. I just wanted to use my real name but a warning came up that this would be made public, which I didn’t want, so I entered ‘Blotreport’ into the ‘first name’ field, and it asked me for a ‘valid last name’. When I tried to do that, the warning kept popping up over the top of the field into which I was supposed to insert the name so that I could not enter anything in the field. So, I had to back out of the whole process and start again. This time it worked; so I then had a Tribel account.
It asked me what groups I wanted to ‘belong’ to, so I naturally chose ‘activism’ and ‘politics’ rather than anything like ‘animals’, ‘comic book artwork’, or ‘Stephen King fandom’. So, I launched my first post2, and it asked me who my target audience was, so I chose ‘activism’ from what looked like a dropdown menu, but actually wasn’t (you normally have to use the search function). It was a simple post about the decline of religion around the world with an attachment of my most recent article on the topic3.
As you will see in this first post, I made a mistake in stringing the first two words together, as ‘Religionis’. However, trying to correct it using the edit function seemed to get the system locked into an interminable loop when I hit ‘save’. I waited for minutes for it to save, but gave up in the end and backed out. However, it did save anyway. Editing a post is something you cannot do in Twitter, but can in Facebook.
My second post4 was sent to ‘activism’ and ‘politics’ but I also made it public, by ticking a little box in the bottom left hand of the post dialogue box.
This post was about me being a Twitter ‘refugee’, and I attached an article which explains how Musk will bugger up Twitter, mostly because he acquired it for political rather than business reasons5. It is an interesting read.
Both posts engendered likes and comments which were quite quick, but were not as immediate or as numerous as you get on Twitter, unsurprisingly, as the number of users in Twitter is in the millions while that of Tribel is in the many thousands. However, the latter is apparently increasing rapidly.
While I have now made posts on Tribel, I only have a vague idea how it operates; much as I did when I started on Twitter. I presume I will eventually have a crack at the ‘how to’ site on Tribel when I get the time. However, I wanted to start in the dark, so to speak, to see how intuitive it was. It was a bit of a struggle for someone of such limited experience as me, but I got there eventually. I’ll do this for a couple of the other alternatives to Twitter, to see which I think is the best, and will likely stick with the one that suits me the best, if indeed, I do leave Twitter permanently.
P.S. I thought that I might start a group ‘Australian Politics’ on Tribel, and checked out the groups list and surprise, surprise, such a group already existed. So, I joined it; it now has 10 members!6
Sources
- https://www.tribel.com/trending
- https://www.tribel.com/posts/373f15a0-5cc4-11ed-8a63-cfe42c78efe1
- https://blotreport.com/2022/06/28/and-so-it-continues/
- https://www.tribel.com/posts/f3bef470-5d78-11ed-a33e-4b6c00cf621e
- https://eand.co/the-lesson-of-elon-musks-twitter-everything-the-far-right-touches-dies-5d7d4ddb980e
- https://www.tribel.com/groups/21dcf44d-933c-446a-bd44-65aba43d41a6
Re The one word name issue: I was at university with a bloke named Wolf. Just Wolf. This sent the enrollment system into some sort of breakdown and it silently added an initial. A.
A Wolf.
He was not impressed and successfully got it changed to The.
As someone who has spent time spec’ing and designing databases that store names and moderates their language on public forums as identifiers this sort of crap drives me fucking mental.
Re Twitter: Its a cesspool. I’d say you’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy but I frequented 4Chan back in the day. Musk will simply break it because he suffers from the amateur engineer’s delusion that you can design out all problems. Not that it wasn’t already broken – witness just how fast senior management sold out at the first sniff of a mug buyer.
The lack of an edit function also drives me mental when I spot a typo as soon as I hit reply.
Laurie,
The lack of an edit function has made me more accepting of my mistakes. I have to be, otherwise I’d either do nothing or go round the twist.
Laurie,
Twitter is not a cesspool. The trick is to block or report any vegetables. Doing that makes it anything but a cesspool. Those I interact with are knowledgeable, often witty, concerned about their children’s future, and most are very genuine people with whom you feel like you’d like to have a face to face chat.
The advertisers are also deserting in droves.
Oh, I agree that there are some great (and very, very funny) people on Twitter. There were some very funny and genuine people on alt.tasteless. I’ve met helpful and genuine people on 4Chan (well, 8Chan really). This does not preclude the place being a cesspool. 🙂
I have often found myself at loggerheads with lazy database structures. I had a student whose surname included an apostrophe which was culturally sensitive. The system couldn’t enrol him without removing the apostrophe. Ditto my surname which is McN… it would lower case me,
Greg,
Don’t get me started on databases. An organisation I worked for had no idea how to do them or what to do with them, and every year at the annual review the same topic would come up (essentially ‘our databases are awful’), so I wrote this: https://blotreport.com/2019/07/07/databases-are-like-potplants/
I’ve not seen the apostrophe problem since UniCode became standard. I fondly remember (that’s sarcasm, by the way) sitting opposite a middle aged bloke named O’Brien who couldn’t see a problem with data validation rules that allowed only letters.
Fine bit of writing by Umai Haque (link 6), if a tad OTT and, I suspect, optimistic as far as the demise of Twitter, CrazYe West and all things extreme right are concerned. Wrt the latter Umai is wrong imo, although at least one “businessman” – Alex Jones – who caught on to how easily naive and credulous rw extremists will part with their money has now learned, “free speech” (aka despicable lies in the real world) comes with major consequences [sometimes].
Jon,
Most people I know here and elsewhere are all for free speech. However, to RWNJs it means being able to utter lies and hate speech and for it to be free of consequences. That is the problem.
Indeed. They don’t want freedom of speech. They want freedom from consequences.
Arthur,
Free speech comes with consequences. You waste my time with your ludicrous and numerous assertions that ‘almost 10 years’ of coalition government was a gross and unforgivable exaggeration but that for those employed as journalists to do the same was perfectly acceptable ‘because they would ignore you’. That did make me laugh as it shows what is important to you.
Musk was at it again the other day, complaining that people using their own limited power of free speech were apparently somehow trying to “destroy free speech in America”. Covfefe to that.
That he missed the irony in his comment (a frequent occurrence for him) is redolent of Trump’s hubris. Got no doubt myself that his claims of “massive” revenue drops are exaggerated, although hope springs eternal.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/04/elon-musk-says-twitter-has-had-massive-revenue-drop.html
Musk: “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
Jon,
Some of these people are so lacking in self awareness it boggles the mind.
Oh Twitter has indeed suffered a catastrophic revenue drop.
They presell advertising for the year. For a while now, ad buyers have been getting nervous about their brands being associated with neofacists, cookers and other loonies. When twitter failed to address their concerns they failed to buy ad space. This represents from 15% up to half of Twitter’s revenue depending on who you talk to.
There was a very instructive article on this a couple of days ago, but it was linked on Twitter so I can’t find it now (irony is alive and well).
Executive summary: actions, meet consequences.
A this point we only have Musk’s (unreliable) word for that “massive revenue loss” claim Laurie. Any revenue loss from advertisers may be temporary, but Twitter has had many ups and downs wrt to its bottom line in recent years. Correlation is also not causation. We know some big corps have temporarily stopped advertising but that is unlikely imo to be the only reason for Twitter revenue falls.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/companies/dud-deal-the-real-problem-for-musk-s-twitter-20221107-p5bw7b.html?ref=rss
Jon,
Here is a bit more detail about the quandary Musk finds himself in. https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-11-07/analysis-twitters-massive-revenue-drop-adds-to-heavy-debt-burden
Pretty much confirms what others have written about the Twitter financial situation (and how BAD the deal Musk signed onto was) – a situation NOT primarily related to “activists attempting to shut down Musk’s access to free speech”.
Interestingly, in pretty obviously related news, Meta has announced job losses due in part to reducing advertising revenues. That companies are tightening their advertising belts in the current USA and world economic situation shouldn’t surprise anyone, apart from the “world’s richest man” of course.
Musk’s off the cuff remarks on Twitter have already led to him being sanctioned for fraud: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
Jon,
Musk seems to not understand what a ‘basis in fact’ means. Narcissists are like that.