What to know
- Tribela officially launched in Canada this week after a beta rollout in 40+ countries; it’s now available on the App Store, with an Android version coming soon.
- The platform emphasizes user autonomy, offering chronological and format-specific feeds, no infinite scroll, hidden engagement metrics and AI moderation designed to filter harmful content without suppressing creativity.
- The app also plans to introduce a creator fund, supported by a membership model, to financially back artists regardless of follower count or engagement numbers.
A new social media app has just launched in Canada, and it is hoping to create an alternative for those who like to form connections and express themselves online without having to face the toxicity that often comes with it.
The brand new social media platform Tribela had its soft Canadian tribute on Wednesday, after a controlled beta version was released in over 40 countries across the world. As of now, it is available to be downloaded on the App Store, while its Android version is set to come soon.
The new app promises innovative features that allow users to experience social media in a different way, offering more options to customize your feed, without engagement pressure and less addictive feeds.
Acclaimed Canadian movie producer Natalie Boll, who is the Founder and CEO of Tribela, tells Now Toronto the idea to create an alternative social media platform came after her daughter experienced cyberbullying.
“I worked in the media in Canada for over 20 years, and I was very much on social media…And I loved the power of social media. But when my daughter got her first device, first in school and then her first cell phone, she experienced social media in a much different way,” she said.
“At the time, she was being bullied at school and it went online, and what she experienced and what was allowed to be said to her and done was so unbelievable to me…What I realized is that young people experience social media completely differently than adults.”
Boll said that her initial reaction was to delete all her and her daughter’s social media accounts, but that soon proved to be socially isolating for them.
“I lost [touch with] so many people. I had friends that were having health concerns, or that got married or moved or had children. I had no idea what was happening,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be the choice between, this is what you got from social media, or just going offline completely… I thought, ‘Well, there’s got to be a different choice.’ That’s really where the birth of Tribela came from.”
The founder says the app’s unique features were born out of conversations and surveys with young internet users, along with lots of research and the development of an AI moderator that could filter offensive and harmful content without censoring users.
Unique features
According to Boll, one of the most prominent characteristics of Tribela is that it is highly customizable to the user’s taste.
The app allows users to engage and produce content in several formats, including short and longer videos, single or multiple photos, text-based posts of up to 2,000 words, and voice notes. Along with that, they have the option to customize their feeds to the content format of their liking.
“If you just want to see text, you can isolate it just to text. If you want to see video, you can isolate it as just a video. If you want to see everything, you’ll see everything. And so it’s really about your space and how you want to experience your feed,” Boll said.
In addition, the app also allows users to customize their feeds based on their interests and connections, with posts that appear in chronological order. Meanwhile, an explore tab only offers content outside of the users’ default interest and friends, so they can step out of their bubble if they wish to.
“This was a really big point for us, so we wanted you to have autonomy over your experience, but also autonomy over your attention, so you are really in control of how you experience the app,” she said.
The customizable feed also does not offer an infinite scroll, with the posts being limited to the users’ followed interests and connections, offering a relief from the usual hours-long doomscroll.
Moreover, the app attempts to reduce engagement pressure, with no number associated with snaps or comments. While the creator themselves will receive a notification when someone engages with their posts, this information will not be available for others.
“You don’t have that, ‘How many people snap my post? Did people see people snap my post? Am I getting enough snaps on my post?’ That’s completely removed, and people are really enjoying that,” Boll added.
The app’s unique AI moderator also filters all explicit, violent or sexual content which can be viewed as triggering, while considering the context of the post to avoid censorship.
“A lot of people worry about moderation. But essentially, when you look at the bigger platforms, the way the algorithms suppress content, a lot of people are getting censored inadvertently by the algorithm pushing them down, and their exposure is not as prominent as other people,” Boll explained.
“Whereas Tribela, we weighed it based on your interest, we weighed it based on your friends. We don’t want any behavioural influence in your feed, how you want to experience the platform, but we just don’t want this triggering content…That’s not what we wanted Tribela for. We want art. We want creation. We want human connection.”
Membership and creator fund
As an app that values self-expression and art creation, Tribela also aims to offer compensation for artists in the platform through a creator’s fund.
Boll says any artists or creators in the platform soon will be able to submit a creator’s survey and get funding for art their upload to the platform. With no engagement metrics, the fund is available for any creators, regardless of their popularity or how many users engage with their post.
“We wanted to support artists and creation, but we also find that a lot of the time the creators that we spoke with, they are having to change the content from their initial creativity to fit the algorithm,” she explained.
“We’re taking that pressure off so that people can create, and then it’s kind of creating a more intentional community.”
To support the creator fund, those looking to join Tribela will have a period to use the app for free, but will later be asked to put in a membership fee.
To learn more about this new social media, visit the Tribela website.
