Most people have never strayed from YouTube. Why would one?
Yet, Rumble has been in operation for over 10 years with a stated aim of better serving content creators since "Google was prioritizing influencers on YouTube and not independent content creators" [0].
Basically, as an alternative to the one and only anointed Algorithm brought to you by whatever the prevailing market forces wanted to allow or increase viewership of for whatever reason.
As time would show, the founder was apparently correctly observing a gap in the market.
In 2020, with many people increasingly online, all of the major social media platforms (including YouTube) increasingly banned what they termed to be misinformation (when in fact it was highly debatable what was the actual misinformation being pumped out--only, those debates were generally rapidly banned from such platforms, so it was hard for many people to even be aware of what alternate arguments existed in any meaningful/organic sense).
So, alternatives to YouTube gained more usage, among them:
- Rumble
- Odysee (was: LBRY)
- Bitchute
Prior to 2020, you might hear "Bitchute" or one of the other alternative video hosting platforms and immediately think of some very, very unsavory political content (Rule 34 of the internet). That's how I guess such platforms had been portrayed in the mainstream and main-alternative media until then.
So, for most people, unless they were for some reason interested in any of the unorthodox views (in any domain, really), or in the content of content creators who had been banned from YouTube already (in many cases, with totally reasonable content being the reason for the ban), then, yeah, there would be no reason to ever hear of them, probably--except maybe in the most shallow and extremely negative, caricaturish light imaginable (why that would be, IDK).
Basically, yeah. Another “free speech absolutism” media company that doesn’t want to acknowledge that some speech (e.g. Holocaust denial) is actually illegal in many countries in mainland Europe, because it’s their bread and butter to host said speech.
Rumble isn’t a huge platform and I doubt this is much more than a publicity stunt.
A lot of people used to believe that it was important to tolerate speech they did not agree with, and opposed any laws that oppressed free speech, as it would lead to a world where careless talk or disagreement with the establishment authority led to unjust imprisonment, and here we are, they were right.
That's not really comparable with telegram IMO.