Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

RW junk science crap for malnourished brains.

But Rumble’s democratizing vision for speech online has so far mostly appealed to people on the right. That includes numerous extremists who use their Rumble accounts to deny the effectiveness of vaccines, play down the horrific human toll of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and question the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Still, criticism of the often capricious and inconsistent nature of online censorship rings true beyond those with fringe beliefs.

There is a large audience to be had, and one that some who study far-right content online warn has been left unchecked to grow into a powerful political weapon for conservatives and supporters of Mr. Trump.

(As for what it considers out of bounds, Rumble says it does not tolerate anything that is overtly racist, promotes violence or breaks the law.)

But there are also the popular Rumble creators the company doesn’t talk about in news releases, like Alex Jones of Infowars, who was barred from YouTube and other mainstream platforms in 2018 and now has more than 100,000 Rumble followers.

One of Rumble’s marquee names is Dan Bongino, the pro-Trump host and former Secret Service agent who replaced Rush Limbaugh in some radio markets and streams his daily show on Rumble to 2.2 million subscribers. Mr. Bongino’s path to Rumble illustrates the inherent difficulties of policing misinformation and conspiracy theories. YouTube started cracking down on him in the fall of 2020 for violating its policies meant to stop the spread of false stories about the coronavirus.

After YouTube prevented Mr. Bongino from collecting ad revenue from the site, he announced that he was taking an equity stake in Rumble and made it his preferred video platform. “We need a home,” he said at the time. “We need somewhere to go where conservative views won’t be discriminated against.”

In the weeks and months that followed, as Mr. Trump refused to accept his loss in the election and YouTube blocked content that bolstered his false claims of widespread voter fraud, others jumped on board with Rumble, too, including One America News.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/business/media/rumble-social-media-conservatives-videos.html