Report: Reddit Blocks Links to Anti-Censorship Video Platform Rumble

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman
Cody Glenn/Web Summit via Sportsfile/Flickr

Reddit is reportedly blocking links to Rumble, an anti-censorship video hosting platform and competitor to YouTube. Many prominent conservatives maintain a presence on Rumble, including Dan Bongino, PragerU, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), widely touted as a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

According to tech censorship watchdog Reclaim the Net, Rumble is facing domain-level censorship on Reddit, similarly to how the platform censored BitChute, another alternative video platform, last year.

Via Reclaim the Net:

Reddit users have been reporting to Reclaim The Net that the social media site is censoring alternative video platform Rumble in private messages.

Screenshots shared show that the platform is informing users that their messages containing links to Rumble are blocked by domain filters.

Reclaim The Net was able to independently confirm this, also seeing that, on Desktop, any private messages that contained a link to a Rumble simply failed to turn up in the recipient’s inbox.

Last year, another alternative video social network, BitChute, also saw links to bitchute.com blocked in Reddit posts. Users at the time noticed that any post containing such links was being automatically removed, with no obvious moderator action taking place, while links could still be posted in comments.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined Rumble earlier this month, after Google-owned YouTube censored a roundtable conference he hosted on COVID-19.

“Gov. Ron DeSantis is a longtime proponent of free speech and has been at the forefront of the effort to demonopolize Big Tech. He understands firsthand Americans’ distrust of monolithic tech companies and the danger they pose to free expression and free markets,” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavloski at the time.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.

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