Is Rumble a true rival of YouTube?

A writer and social ativist, positioned on the left, and a youtuber and podcaster, positioned on the right. The content produced by Ferréz and Monark are extremely different. But both were news in March. They are the first invited to publish content in Rumble. This is a new YouTube rival that starts playing in Brazil.

Created by Canadian Chris Pavlovski in 2013, Rumble is a new platform that wants to break the empire of You Tube, the videos giant created in 2005 and owned by Google since 2006. Daily Motion and Vimeo are other competitors.

Rumble differentials

What made Rumble a topic on social media was not just the strategy of inviting famous youtubers like Ferréz and Monark, but its “very libertarian” stance and the promise not to censor the content. Rumble advertises claiming to be against of "canceling" and claim: it will only censor content if it has pornography, hate or encourages violence.

With this ideology, people from the American alt-right, including former President Donald Trump, began posting videos on this platform. There are "people on the left" in Rumble like Glenn Greenwald, former journalist for The Intercept. But the presence of Alt-Right made Rumble arrive in Brazil as a Telegram video, a place to spread disinformation and wage political wars.

In addition to the libertarian ideology about censorship, Rumble promises an easier monetization system, with few rules for a channel to receive money per audience. Payments are made through Paypal, a popular payment gateway. But is it worth switching from YouTube to Rumble?

Pros

It's true, Rumble has an easy monetization system. Anyone can create a channel and understand how they will receive the money. There's also built-in Analytics, so creators can track the channel's development.

The layout is similar to YouTube, especially for those who publish. There is an interesting organization on the homepage, the videos are displayed by topics, although they still use some algorithms to choose the content.

Another interesting topic is the possibility of syncing with YouTube. If you have an audience on this platform, but you don't want to leave the most popular video platform, you don't have to post twice (for the video in this article, yes, but syncing takes time).

Cons

There are many premium features for those who make professional content. It is an important source of income for Rumble. So YouTube offers more free resources for creators because Google wants non-professional creators too.

The videos published in Rumble are, mostly, in English, because just the USA and Canada often use Rumble nowadays. In Brazil, the majority of videos are made by Bolsonaro supporters. This is the same wave of USA in Brazil.

A curious topic about Rumble is the revelation of monetization to audience. The plarform displays how much each video earns with views. This is transparency, but a security threat too.

Conclusions

The first impressions is that Rumble appears to be an interesting platform for video publishing. The monetization system is easy. Embeding videos on websites and blogs as well.

But it's hard to declare that Rumble is a true rival to YouTube. In the messenger market, Telegram has benefited from problems in its rival Whatsapp. These issues like system crashes don't happen on YouTube.

And as for disinformation and Alt-Right propaganda, Brazilian justice will need to make decisions like those taken with Telegram. If Rumble becomes a popular platform, of course.

Watch the article on YouTube and Rumble (in Portuguese)