The free speech streaming website Rumble was banned in Russia earlier this year over the video platform’s refusal to comply with Kremlin censorship.
Russian internet users were unable to access Rumble beginning in early March after the company dismissed the government’s complaints related to a channel called Allatra TV. In a message to the streaming website reviewed by The Federalist, Russia demanded the channel’s page be banned because its “activities are deemed undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.”
The company examined the channel for violations of Rumble’s platform guidelines and determined no independent censorship was warranted.
“The Russian government demanded that Rumble remove content that didn’t violate our terms of service,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told The Federalist. “The Russian request was a direct assault on the universal human right to free expression, so we refused, and they turned off access to Rumble inside Russia.”
Pavlovski noted that while Rumble is banned, Google-owned YouTube still operates in the country despite the presence of the same channel publishing on their service.
“YouTube still operates in Russia, and the world deserves to know whether they are collaborating with Russia’s censorship regime,” Pavlovski said.
The Federalist reached out to YouTube inquiring what rules from Moscow the streaming giant complied with in order to remain online in Russia. YouTube responded with a series of links to the company’s terms of service and emphasized the platform’s censorship of state-backed news channels amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. The company said more
