Rumble announces departure from Brazil in protest against censorship imposed on users

Rumble, a YouTube competitor, announced its departure from Brazil in protest against the wave of censorship that has been imposed on its users through court orders and pressure from the Lula government. The announcement was made on December 22 by Rumble president Chris Pavlovski.

Two days before the announcement, the platform partially took the Terça Livre channel off the air in compliance with an order from the minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Alexandre de Moraes. The Terça Livre channel is maintained by exiled journalist Allan dos Santos.

In the ad, Pavlovski does not mention Moraes’ order nor does he refer to a specific user.

A People’s Gazette contacted the president of Rumble to find out if the announcement was linked to Moraes’ order to overthrow Terça Livre, but did not receive a response by the time this article was written.

When accessing the platform’s website, users have come across the following message: “Due to demands from the Brazilian government to remove creators from our platform, Rumble is currently unavailable in Brazil. We are challenging these government demands and hope to restore access soon.”

Through social network X, Chris Pavlovski said he will not be intimidated “by foreign demands to censor Rumble creators.”

Pavlovski also said that he is disappointed with the Brazilian Judiciary, but assured that the measure will not have a negative impact on the company’s finances.

Even though Rumble has become unavailable in Brazil, the service can still be accessed through a Virtual Private Network or VPN (acronym in English for Virtual Private Network).

Through a note, Pavlovski informed that he decided to temporarily disable access to Rumble while he contests the court decisions.

See the note in full.

Recently, Brazilian courts required us to remove certain creators from Rumble. As part of our mission to restore a free and open internet, we are committed to not changing the goals of our content policies. Users with unpopular opinions are free to access our platform on the same terms as our millions of other users. Therefore, we have decided to disable access to Rumble for users in Brazil while we challenge the legality of the Brazilian court demands.

We are disappointed with the court decisions that have caused the Brazilian people to lose the ability to view a wide range of Rumble content. This action will not have a material effect on our business, but we hope that the Brazilian courts will reconsider their decisions so that we can restore service soon.