Rumble, a social media website founded in 2013, is an online sharing platform which has gained popularity for its quickly accessible videos—within the past few years, as a form of finding information on current political issues, especially with the right-leaning demographic. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly three-quarters of those who regularly get news from Rumble (76%) identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, representing an overwhelming majority of conservative viewers. Canadian entrepreneur and founder of the site, Chris Pavlovksi, describes it as neutral; however, the common tendency of many of the news pieces to be perpetuating misinformation in favor of the right says otherwise. Promptly following Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Rumble’s popularity skyrocketed, with its monthly users growing from 2 million to more than 20 million at the end of 2016. While not created solely for the purpose of news, a massive part of its users rely on the site for their source of political information. As other platforms create stricter policies to prevent the spread of extreme or potentially harmful views under stronger content regulation, the place for Rumble as a more “open” sharing space among sharing platforms opens up further. The same less strict environment that attracts viewers searching for “the truth” and a form of freer speech on social media is dominated by individual content creators rather than credible group organizations. This has become a major issue in terms of news misinformation, due to the fact that as more and more extremist users run to Rumble after being blocked for misconduct on more mainstream media platforms (such as controversial influencer Andrew Tate and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones), more false news spreads from widely followed and unchecked users of the site. Those in favor of Rumble’s lenient user policies argue that it allows for greater exercise of first amendment rights. Consequently, under the guise of free speech, the truth is muddled beyond repair. Without proper guidelines, users trip and fall down the rabbit hole of misinformation and chaos ensues.
