The online video-hosting platform Rumble, currently enjoying 44 million visitors every month, is about to get much, much larger. On Friday, the company announced that
Truth Social, the social media platform created by the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), has successfully migrated … to Rumble’s cloud infrastructure. This migration will enable the Truth Social platform to scale significantly on a new and cancel-culture-free cloud platform.
“Scale significantly” is the operative phrase. Prior to being unceremoniously booted from Twitter following the faux Capitol “insurrection” in January 2021, Donald Trump had nearly 90 million followers.
In October Trump formally announced the creation of TMTG, named former California Congressman Devin Nunes to head it up, and initially launched in February using hosting service Mastodon.
So many of Trump’s followers stampeded onto the platform that more than a million were wait-listed while the system underwent its beta testing.
Naturally, the anti-Trump media chortled about the “failure” of Trump’s launch. Chris Cillizza of CNN predicted that it was doomed to fail. Noah Berlatsky of The Independent said that if it were successful Trump’s new platform would be a potential “threat to democracy.” The Forward expressed concerns that antisemitism would pervade the platform, while The New York Times expressed “skepticism” about whether Trump’s platform would be able to compete with other rival social media services like Gettr, Parler, and Gab.
And Wikipedia reported that “some commentators pointed out the similarity with the name of the newspaper Pravda (‘Truth’ in English), a notorious propaganda outlet in the Soviet Union.”
On the other hand, Rumble’s founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski was happy to welcome his newest and largest customer:
We are excited to partner with one of the fastest-growing social media companies on the internet. Providing top-notch cloud infrastructure is essential, and Truth Social users will start to see the fruits of our labors immediately.
More than a million of those wait-listed until the end of the testing period have already been added to the new platform, according to Nunes, who added:
[On Thursday], Truth Social and Rumble took a major stride toward rescuing the internet from the grip of the Big Tech tyrants. Our teams have worked tirelessly to realize this great endeavor.
Rumble’s cloud infrastructure is second to none and will be the backbone for the restoration of free speech online for ages to come.
Rumble, founded by Pavlovski in 2013, has enjoyed enormous success on its own. It currently hosts Alex Jones of InfoWars, Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Reuters.
Trump’s TMTG has a massive $1.25 billion to ensure the new platform’s success. And, according to Nunes, “engagement” on the new platform is already ramping up:
We have opened the new Rumble cloud. Yesterday … early in the morning … it went off flawlessly….
You’ve got half of America [who] should be concerned about being canceled by those crazy woke companies.
With Elon Musk’s pending takeover of Twitter, one of those “woke” companies, it is not clear just how many of Trump’s former followers will migrate over to Rumble. Musk has promised to turn Twitter into a “free speech” subscription platform in order to eliminate corporate influence over its platform’s conversations.
As House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene — who had her personal Twitter account permanently suspended last month — said after setting up her account on Truth Social: “Options are always good for consumers.”
And likely to be good for Donald Trump, as well, as he continues to tantalize his followers with increasing intimations about running for a second term in 2024.
