All Americans should join Rumble’s free speech fight | Washington Times - Dean Karayanis:
illustration: Washington Times
December 6, 2021 - "In an era with precious little common ground, everyone objects to social media platforms. Conservatives gripe that they put speech in the hands of Big Tech oligarchs, corporate liberals that reap billions while giving content creators mere pennies. But upstart video platform Rumble has chosen another route, and it’s better to light a candle than tweet about the darkness.
"Rumble’s simple commitment to open expression just gained a big-time ally. The platform just joined forces with CF Acquisition Corp. VI, an entity sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald, which is expected to provide about $400 million to the 'neutral video platform.'
"Rumble not only respects free speech; it offers monetization for videos ten times that of Google’s YouTube, which recently demonetized 'Sad Little Man' for criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci. The video’s content may make Dr. Fauci’s fans faint, but is it any different [from] the music video for the ’80s hit 'Land of Confusion' by Genesis, which depicted a grotesque, senile puppet of President Ronald Reagan kissing a chimp and accidentally nuking the world?
"I had a front-row seat for two of the media’s biggest free-speech revolutions: ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show' and Fox News Channel (FNC). Before them, the majority of Americans tuned in to see their beliefs ridiculed or ignored.... Rumble is still a digital David taking on Google’s Goliath, but those of us who left Rush’s TV show to launch Fox in 1996 didn’t think the country would support a third cable news network, especially with Microsoft and NBC backing MSNBC. But we were young and figured the gig would last just long enough to pay off our bar tabs. Twenty years later, what is now the #1 cable news channel, proved us wrong....
"FNC had Rupert Murdoch’s deep pockets.... Thanks to its merger, Rumble now has that key ingredient of financing. More importantly, they have that commitment to freedom..... Rumble has an uphill climb every bit as steep as Rush and Fox, but they benefit from the fact that Americans are disillusioned with Big Tech. We can watch videos without being transformed into mindless zombies out of a George Romero film — and we like to get paid for what we create.
"We’ll hear a lot of shade thrown at Rumble as it eats away at YouTube’s market share. But America is still an exception to a world of repression, and 44 million have already flocked to its platform, eager to be free of censorship, biased algorithms and digital serfdom."
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