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Thiel-Backed Video Platform Rumble Offers Joe Rogan $100 Million to Switch From Spotify

Because the controversy surrounding Spotify’s relationship with podcast host Joe Rogan continues, Rumble has provided Rogan $100 million to carry his present, “The Joe Rogan Expertise,” over to the free-speech-centric video platform.

Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote in an open letter posted to Twitter on Monday that he stands with Rogan, who has not too long ago come beneath hearth for spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and utilizing racial slurs on the massively widespread podcast.

“We stand with you, your visitors, and your legion of followers in want for actual dialog,” Pavlovski wrote. “So we’d prefer to give you 100 million causes to make the world a greater place. How about you carry all of your reveals to Rumble, each outdated and new, with no censorship, for 100 million bucks over 4 years? That is our probability to save lots of the world. And sure, that is completely legit.”
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Neither Rumble nor Rogan instantly responded to TIME’s request for remark.

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Since launching in 2013, Rumble, a Canadian video-sharing platform that presents itself as an alternative choice to YouTube, has turn out to be a right-wing haven. The location noticed vital development following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with month-to-month viewership surging from 1.6 million customers in fall 2020 to 31.9 million by the top of 2021’s first quarter. It has since acquired backing from a gaggle of outstanding conservative enterprise capitalists together with Peter Thiel and Hillbilly Elegy creator J.D. Vance.

After Rumble introduced on Dec. 1 that it was planning to go public at an preliminary enterprise worth of $2.1 billion, Trump Media and Know-how Group shared on Dec. 14 that Donald Trump’s proposed social media platform, TRUTH Social, had partnered with Rumble.

“Rumble was designed to be resistant to cancel tradition, and we’re on the forefront of a motion that believes everybody advantages from entry to a impartial platform that hosts numerous concepts and opinions,” Pavlovski stated of the partnership in a press launch.

Rumble has beforehand struck content material offers with widespread right-wing personalities like journalist Glenn Greenwald and former U.S. congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

As issues presently stand, Rogan signed a $100 million deal giving Spotify unique rights to his present in 2020. The streaming service has responded to the continued controversy—which has prompted artists like Neil Younger, Joni Mitchell, India Arie, and Crosby, Stills & Nash to tug their music from the platform in protest—by asserting it’s going to add content material warnings to podcasts that handle COVID-19 and getting into into discussions with Rogan that resulted within the removing of as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Expertise.”

“Not solely are a few of Joe Rogan’s feedback extremely hurtful—I need to clarify that they don’t characterize the values of this firm,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a Feb. 6 memo to staff earlier than reasserting that he doesn’t consider that “silencing Joe is the reply.”

“We must always have clear traces round content material and take motion when they’re crossed, however canceling voices is a slippery slope,” he stated.

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