In a recent interview, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski says that his platform has left markets including Russia, France, and Brazil because the governments are attempting to censor free speech. Meanwhile, competitors including Google’s YouTube go along with countries intent on silencing free speech.
After Wolf Financial pointed out in the interview that it “seems like [Rumble] is taking a free speech lean” Pavlovski noted that the video-sharing platform never deviated from the policies it had implemented ten years ago — it’s the other platforms on internet that changed.
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“It would be more that the market sees us as taking that [free speech] lean, but really it’s just us not moving the goalposts from our policies ten years ago,” Pavlovski said.
The Rumble CEO went on to point out that the internet was built on the ideals of “being free and open.”
“That was the belief of the internet for the last two decades,” he said, adding, “Something changed. The only thing is, is Rumble didn’t change. Rumble is still within that belief of keeping the internet free and open.”
“Something happened in the last decade — where everyone decided that they know what’s best for what people can and cannot hear,” Pavlovski added. “Rumble didn’t take that approach. We look at everyone as being adults.”
“And adults can make up their own minds with the information that they have,” he said. “We believe people are smart, and these other platforms are taking the position that they know more than you.”
Pavlovski also pointed out the irony in the attack his company has received over the years:
The Washington Post writes an article, and they talk about how Rumble is filled with “misinformation” — and their examples of why Rumble’s filled with misinformation was that the vaccine was not durable. They were saying, “Conspiracy theorists on Rumble are saying the vaccine is not durable. They’re saying, ‘You’re going to need to take more than one, it’s not going to last forever.'” A year later, it seems like the one that was pushing the misinformation is now the Washington Post, because now you have to take multiple vaccines over and over and over again, multiple times a year.
“It’s same thing with Galileo,” Pavlovski said. “You go back 500 years and they put him in jail because he thought the Earth revolved around the sun, and they they saw that as absolutely wrong in society to say. They put him in jail for that. They saw that as misinformation.”
“What’s misinformation yesterday could be in factual information the day after,” Pavlovski noted. “You can’t stop people from arguing and making points about things and giving opinions about things. The minute that you do that, you live in a tyrannical regime.”
The Rumble CEO added that his company’s “job as a platform is not to tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.”
“You’re smart enough to figure that out,” he said. “You’re smart enough to see all sides of the information and make your own opinion.”
“The minute someone steps in there and tries to tell you what your opinion should be is the minute that you better start questioning things, because something is very wrong,” Pavlovski asserted.
Pavlovski also noted that Rumble has received political pressure “worldwide” for taking the basic pro-free speech position, saying, “We’re banned in China. We left France.”
“We left France because they said they would turn us off if we don’t ban Russian news sources on the platform,” Pavlovski said, explaining that his company refused to do so because “We’re an American company and we’re going to abide by American law, not what you think people should and can hear.”
“If they didn’t violate any of our policies, we’re not going to take them down,” he said.
“And then a year later Russia banned Rumble, so it’s kind of ironic,” Pavlovski added. “We wouldn’t ban creators that they asked us to ban, so Russia turns us off. We’ve also left Brazil for similar reasons — different reasons — but they wanted us to censor political opponents and craters in Brazil, and we said no.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
