Russell Brand, facing multiple assault and grooming accusations from women and girls as young as 16, was just demonetized on YouTube.
But a white knight is riding to his rescue: Rumble.
The self-described “free speech” alternative to YouTube says it will continue to run ads on Brand’s channel. The platform’s official brand safety policy is that they’ll host anything unless it’s illegal. That means companies will still see their ads dance across Rumble users’ screens right before the face of a man currently being investigated by U.K. police over sex assault allegations.
Where does Rumble get all these ads? Ironically … Google. Rumble receives a large majority of its ads from Google Ads. In fact, the platform is part of the Google Video Partners network, a small group of websites that get a chunk of every YouTube ad campaign. This allows Rumble to monetize the same figures who have been kicked off YouTube for brand safety violations.
Rumble’s decision to protect Brand — at the expense of brand safety — won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the platform’s business model.
It has coughed up multi-million dollar deals for the likes of accused rapist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate. Rumble offered Joe Rogan a $100 million deal while he was facing massive public backlash for repeatedly using the n-word on his show.
Looking at these deals and offers, it’s clear that Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski isn’t just ignoring the brand safety of his advertisers — he’s actively seeking out toxic creators.
Here are other toxic channels Rumble monetizes:
Alex Jones
- Jones advertises his show as the “most banned broadcast in the world.” Probably because most platforms don’t want to associate with a man who spent years telling his followers the Sandy Hook mass shooting was “staged.” His followers then harassed and threatened parents who lost their children that day. The false claims, which barely scratch the surface of Jones’ conspiratorial ramblings, saw him ordered to pay about a billion dollars to the families of Sandy Hook victims. He has more than 250,000 followers on Rumble.
Andrew Tate
- Tate and his brother Tristan — who Rumble also monetizes — have been charged with rape and sex trafficking. The “manosphere” influencer was removed from TikTok, YouTube, and all Meta platforms for hate speech in August 2022. Luckily for him, Rumble is still willing to serve your ads to his 1.63 million followers.
Dan Bongino
- YouTube permanently banned Bongino for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. The New York Times reported Bongino was one of the top five “superspreaders of election misinformation.” That might explain why Fox News “ended its relationship” with Bongino just two days after its $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. These days you can find him with nearly 3 million followers on Rumble, of which he is one of the largest shareholders.
Laura Loomer
- Loomer, a far-right activist, is a self-described “Islamophobe” who has described Islam as a “cancer on humanity” and called Muslims “savages.” Her hateful tirades have earned her bans from from Instagram, Facebook, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, and even Uber. Not Rumble, though, where she has just over 8,000 followers.
Steve Bannon’s War Room
- Bannon is a right-wing nationalist who got fired from Donald Trump’s White House, was cut loose from the top job at Breitbart, and was been booted off YouTube, Spotify and Twitter after calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s decapitation. He uses his current show, War Room, to consistently deny the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Bannon, who floated the idea of more violence after Jan. 6 and told far-right crowds to “wear it as a badge of honour” when they’re called racist, has just shy of 1 million followers on Rumble.
BadLands Media
- In 2022, a group of QAnon influencers got together and formed a Rumble channel — BadLands Media. It devotes most of its programming to covering conspiracy theories tied to QAnon, a big-tent lie that suggests former president Donald Trump is waging a secret war against Satan-worshipping pedophiles in elite society. The Rumble channel has 147,000 followers and regularly shows up on the platform’s leaderboard of most-liked videos.
This is just a sampling of the kind of toxic content that’s popular on Rumble — content Google is making sure the platform can profit from despite deeming it too dangerous for YouTube.
Until Google gets its act together and drops Rumble’s seller IDs, here’s how you can protect your own brand from Bongino’s island of toxic toys.