Rumble was founded in October 2013 by Chris Pavlovski as an alternative to
YouTube for independent vloggers and smaller content creators.[12] Pavlovski founded the platform after seeing that
Google was prioritizing
influencers on YouTube and not independent content creators.[13] In its early years, Rumble saw only limited popularity. The platform received a large influx of viewership from 2020 on, the start of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Monthly visitors rose from 1.6 million in 2020, to 31.9 million by 2021.[14] In the first nine months of 2021, Rumble generated more than $6.5 million in revenue, mostly from advertisements, but was not profitable.[15]
The rise of Rumble viewership in 2020 was attributed to then
Republican politician
Devin Nunes, who accused YouTube of overly censoring his channel. Nunes began posting content on Rumble, with other prominent conservatives, such as
Dinesh D'Souza,
Dan Bongino,
Sean Hannity, and Representative
Jim Jordan, following soon after.[6][16][17] In June 2021, former
US PresidentDonald Trump joined Rumble in preparation for recording his
Ohio campaign rally.[18]
On January 11, 2021, Rumble filed an
antitrust lawsuit against Google over its search algorithms, seeking damages exceeding $2 billion.[19][20] Rumble alleged that Google manipulated its algorithm so as to favor Google's own YouTube over Rumble in Google search results. Rumble alleged that this direct manipulation reduced its viewership and resulted in lower advertising revenues for their company.[21] In August 2022, a California judge said that Rumble's case against Google can proceed. [22]
Rumble received investment from venture capitalists
Peter Thiel,
Vivek Ramaswamy and
J. D. Vance in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million.[23] In October 2021, Rumble acquired
Locals.[24] On December 14, 2021,
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that it entered a "wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement" with Rumble in a statement that also stated that Rumble would operate part of
Truth Social as well as TMTG.[25] Also in December 2021, Rumble challenged a
New York law prohibiting hate speech on social media.[26]
In August 2022, Rumble announced plans to provide an
online advertising platform known as Rumble Ads, with Truth Social as its first publisher.[27][28] Rumble became a publicly traded company in September 2022, trading under ticker RUM on the
NASDAQ, after merging with a
special-purpose acquisition company.[29] In May 2023, Rumble acquired the podcasting platform CallIn.[30]
Along with four other tabs in its main interface, Rumble features "recommended channels" to follow and an "Earnings" tab in its interface.[33] Rumble also allows its users to generate revenue from their videos.[33] Users upload videos that are licensed to Rumble's partners, such as
Yahoo! and
Microsoft News, after which money made from those videos is directly deposited into the Rumble account of the user.[33]
Using data from February 2021, researchers noted that several content creators have gained a receptive audience on Rumble after their content was pulled from YouTube or
Facebook. They include
Del Bigtree,
Sherri Tenpenny, and
Simone Gold.[47][48][49] According to a June 2021 article from Slate, "Pavlovski has recently become more outspoken in accusing Big Tech of censorship and now actively courts prominent conservatives and
intellectual dark web figures to join Rumble."[40] It also hosted
Truth Social as of June 2022.[50] In August 2021, Rumble reached agreements with former
Democratic Representative
Tulsi Gabbard and The Intercept founder
Glenn Greenwald to start posting their videos to the site.[51]
As of August 15, 2022, Rumble reported 78 million monthly active users (MAU).[52] That month, after being banned from most other platforms for hate speech and harmful conduct, kickboxer and social media personality
Andrew Tate began posting on Rumble. Tate's move coincided with a significant increase in downloads of the Rumble app.[53][54]
According to an August 2022
Reuters article, Rumble is 'better-funded' and 'more mainstream' than its competitors
BitChute and
Odysee. Reuters states that all three platforms 'include misinformation and conspiracy theories', with Rumble 'moderating more content' than the other two.[55] Unlike BitChute and Odysee, Rumble does suppress results when searching for some keywords associated with hate speech or extremism, although the content itself is still accessible.[55][56]
According to a May 2022
Pew Research Center study, 20% of American adults have heard of Rumble, while 2% regularly got their news from Rumble. Of regular users, 76% identified as Republicans or were Republican-leaning, while 22% identified as Democrats or were Democratic-leaning. Around 90% of Rumble users believed news hosted on on the site was mostly accurate. Most of Rumble's 200 most prominent accounts at that time were run by individuals, 22% of whom had been banned from other social media platforms. 55% of these prominent accounts also had accounts on other websites such as YouTube. A June 2022 review of posts by Pew Research from Rumble's 200 most prominent accounts found that 49% had posted about guns or gun rights, 48% had posted about abortion, 44% had posted about LGBTQ topics (specifically the
LGBT grooming conspiracy theory), 42% had posted about the
January 6 Capitol attack, and 26% had posted about extreme
vaccine skepticism.[57][58]
Following the 2022
Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rumble did not follow other social media platforms in banning Russian state media from their site. In November 2022, Rumble was blocked in France, after their refusal to comply with the country's demand for the removal of Russian state media accounts.[9][59]
In December 2023, Rumble departed from Brazil, leaving a message for visitors from the country on its website:[61]
Because of Brazilian government demands to remove creators from our platform, Rumble is currently unavailable in Brazil. We are challenging these government demands and hope to restore access soon.
^
abDias, Elizabeth (July 8, 2022).
"The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: 'We Are Seeing Them Emboldened'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 2, 2022. Retrieved September 4, 2022. In a livestream on Rumble, a video site popular with the far right, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene...{{
cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (
link)
^
abHarwell, Drew (August 16, 2021).
"Rumble, a YouTube rival popular with conservatives, will pay creators who 'challenge the status quo'". The Seattle Times. Retrieved September 4, 2022. Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counter-extremism think tank in London that has worked with Google on a European fund targeting online
hate speech, said that during the pandemic, Rumble has 'become one of the main platforms for conspiracy communities and far-right communities in the U.S. and around the world.'
^
abcFuchs, Hailey (March 24, 2022).
"Russia state media turn to Rumble to get out their word". POLITICO. Retrieved September 4, 2022. Forced off mainstream platforms, a number of radio shows associated with Russian state-run media have found a welcome home on Rumble, the video-sharing platform favored by conservatives and the far right.