Over the past few weeks, four shows on Sputnik, a news agency and radio broadcaster controlled by the Russian state media group Rossiya Segodnya, began broadcasting on Rumble, which has become popular with the far right and Donald Trump-supporting crowd. Their adoption of the venue has come following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after which platforms like Google and DirecTV booted Russian programming off their services.
The moves underscore how the far right and self-professed open speech sites continue to provide havens for Russian state information. But it also illustrates how limited the reach of those news sources has become in the wake of the Ukraine invasion as they face dissent from within their own ranks over the war.
Rumble reported 36 million average monthly users in the third quarter of 2021, a number massively dwarfed by YouTube. Used by the likes of Steve Bannon and — albeit infrequently — former President Trump, Rumble has taken on the posture of an anti-cancel-culture YouTube. The company boasts a “mission to protect a free and open internet.” But it’s become a home for far-right conspiracy theories and conservatives booted from mainstream sites. Rumble did not return a request for comment.
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