Video sharing platform Rumble has threatened legal action against blockchain-based video sharing platform Odysee over a recent tweet that accused Rumble of using bots to boost its traffic.
The December 8 tweet displayed a screenshot of Rumble and Odysee’s engagement metrics on web analytics service Similarweb and alleged that Rumble was using bots “to generate fake traffic in order to swindle investors.”
On December 9, Rumble’s recently-hired high profile General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Michael Ellis, who formally served in senior legal and policy roles in the intelligence community, the White House, and Congress, sent a letter to Odysee CEO Julian Chandra and requested an immediate retraction and correction of the tweet which he said “falsely claimed that Rumble has misled its investors with respect to its user engagement statistics.”
The letter also requests a confirmation of the retraction and correction from Odysee by 5pm EST on Friday December 10 and threatens “aggressive action” from Rumble “to safeguard its interests” if it doesn’t receive a “satisfactory response by that time.”
“We do not use bots to inflate traffic on Rumble,” Ellis states. “Any claims to the contrary-including your tweet–risk misleading potential investors in Rumble as well as users, partners, and others in the marketplace.”
Ellis argues that Similarweb’s statistics “do not accurately reflect user engagement on Rumble’s website and apps” and show a shorter average visit duration and lower pages per visit number because they include videos that are viewed through Rumble’s licensed player. He asserts that the figures in Rumble’s investor presentation provide “accurate user engagement statistics based on Google Analytics and Rumble’s own measurements” because they “measure engagement only on Rumble’s website and apps and not other websites.”
“Rumble is threatening to sue us over a tweet,” Odysee said in response to the letter. “Go ahead, show everyone who you really are.”
