The Twitter account "Libs of Tiktok" has attracted a lot of controversy this year, especially when it comes to social media censorship.
The account didn't start out as "Libs of Tiktok", It began as a mostly nondescript personal account named @shaya_ray in November 2020, which held conservative views, and mostly tweeted pro-Trump material. It also posted a lot of criticism of then-governor Andrew Cuomo -- much of which wasn't yet being acknowledged by the left/media. Most notably, the account claimed to have been at the January 6 Capitol riots, but said it did not enter the building like "a few crazy people" did.
In March 2021, the name was changed to @houseplantpotus, becoming a parody account of a houseplant in the Biden White House. However, this gimmick never really caught on, and the account's following wasn't growing. About a month later, the account became @libsoftiktok. The new gimmick of the account would be reposts of cringe Tiktok videos by leftists.
This quickly caught on, and the follower count ballooned from around 1000 in April 2021 to about 65,000 in August 2021. It was sometime during this period where I found and followed the account. I had incorrectly assumed at the time that it was run by a young conservative male. The person behind the account was careful to remain anonymous.
The account's following grew even more in August 2021 when Joe Rogan started talking about it, and it was sometimes retweeted or mentioned by various major conservative news figures. It still had fewer than 200,000 followers prior to April 2022. It typically would simply repost left-wing content found either on websites or social media, often which would confirm allegations by the right, or expose bad behavior on the left. The account morphed to mostly focus upon harmful elements of trans culture aimed at kids. It exposed teachers bragging about indoctrinating young children into trans/LGBTQ ideology. It exposed greedy/unethical hospitals, where executives would brag about how much money they were making from mutilating surgeries and dangerous hormone treatments on "trans" kids. It exposed perverted "family friendly" drag shows where drag queens would perform obscene routines in front of children.
This content was very effective, because it provided concrete evidence to counter the allegation that right wing media was simply making these things up in order to stoke LGBTQ hatred. Prior to Libs of Tiktok, we were told that teachers were not talking about their sex lives to kindergartners, that children's hospitals were not harming kids with dangerous "gender affirming" treatments, and that there was no such thing as obscene drag shows for kids. Libs of Tiktok proved that, yes, indeed all of this was happening. And it was all proven very simply by posting direct content from social media or websites created by these leftists themselves. This content was often otherwise was not easy to find, and Libs of Tiktok would dig it out of low-follower personal social media of teachers, or otherwise boring hospital board meetings.
The left could never coherently explain what was wrong with Libs of TikTok. They claimed that it caused "violence against LGBTQ people" and "threats against children's hospitals", but they would not address the undeniable fact that this account was simply reposting content of left wingers showing themselves behaving badly. Was it Libs of Tiktok's fault that a children's hospital got threats, after one of their executives was caught bragging on video about how much money they've made from hormone treatments and transgender surgeries on children? If a 1st grade teacher got fired after bragging on social media that she's teaching 6-year-olds about bisexuality and how they can choose their own gender, is it Libs of Tiktok's fault for reposting the video?
Libs Of Tiktok simply exposed what the left knew what was happening, but hoped you wouldn't see.
Finally, in April 2022, liberal activist reporter Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post decided to strike back by investigating who was really behind Libs of Tiktok, and expose them. Lorenz's thinking was that the person was staying anonymous for a reason, and once unmasked, the person behind the account might be afraid to continue posting.
Libs of Tiktok made a mistake by not deleting their previous posting history from the account's earlier incarnations. This allowed Taylor to dig into the earliest tweets, and deduce who was probably behind it. Back in late 2020 and early 2021, the account had few followers and didn't take as much care to avoid giving clues regarding their identity. Taylor figured out that it was likely a NY-based Jewish female real estate agent named Chaya Raichik.
Lorenz then aggressively attempted to ambush Raichik for an interview, and when that failed, started knocking on the doors of Raichik's family members, demanding to know where she could be found. Shortly after this, Lorenz published an article identifying Raichik as the one behind the account, and unfairly accusing her of "promoting LBGTQ hate" and "inciting violence against children's hospitals".
This kicked off a feud between Raichik and Lorenz, which is still going to this day. Raichik accused Lorenz of "doxing" her and "stalking" her family members. Lorenz continued to accused Raichik of being a hatemonger and a tool of the right to promote violence. The two have been bashing each other on social media for the past 8 months.
Lorenz's actions also had the dreaded "Streisand effect". By bringing the public's attention to Libs of Tiktok, and by starting the ongoing feud with Raichik, the Libs of Tiktok account ballooned from about 175,000 followers in April 2022 to 1.7 million today. Much of that follower count increased in the months following Lorenz's article. Raichik didn't directly confirm she ran the account, but also didn't deny it. However, she remained defiant that Lorenz would not run her off of Twitter, and continued doing her thing. That same month, as a result of the controversy, Seth Dillon of conservative-leaning news parody site Babylon Bee declared that he would financially support Libs of Tiktok and its mission.
In attempting to "expose" Libs of Tiktok, Lorenz accidentally grew its following and got it financial backing. Oops!
But who is Chaya Raichik? I'll get into that in the next post.
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Originally Posted by RichardBrodiesCombover.
