Rumble has completed the rollout of Rumble Shorts across every major platform. The feature went live on the web at rumble.com/shorts earlier this month. Google Play approved it for Android on February 13. Apple signed off on iOS on February 25, making it now available cross-platform.
The full stack is live; vertical videos of 90 seconds or less, swipeable, personalized, and tipped through Rumble Wallet.
Short-form video is the dominant format on the internet right now, and the dominant platform for it has spent the past year demonstrating exactly what centralized content control looks like at scale.
TikTok’s censorship controversies, its terms of service rewrites, and the political pressure applied to its existence have pushed creators and viewers toward alternatives. Rumble is the most prominent video platform built around a different premise.
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“Rumble Shorts provides a digestible viewing option, and of course, there’s free speech with every swipe,” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski at launch. “With Rumble Shorts, we stay true to our mission of defending free expression, while we also boost creator discovery and offer even more opportunities for creators and channels to grow and get paid.”
The contrast with TikTok’s model is built into the product. On TikTok, the algorithm decides what you see, and the platform decides what creators are allowed to say. Rumble’s Shorts feed is personalized, too, but the platform’s pitch is that what fills it won’t be quietly throttled for political content, that a creator who posts views inconvenient to governments or advertisers won’t find their videos mysteriously failing to reach anyone.
“Rumble Shorts delivers quick, easy-to-consume videos, with free speech built into every swipe,” Pavlovski said following the iOS approval. “At Rumble, we are reinforcing our commitment to protecting open expression at the same time we’re helping creators get discovered, expand their audiences, and increase their earnings. Once again, Rumble is showing why it’s the top destination for content creators.”
The monetization angle is important here, too. Rumble Shorts integrates tipping through Rumble Wallet, a crypto-based payment system the company launched earlier this year.
Creators on platforms that censor them don’t only lose reach, they lose income. A platform where speech and payment infrastructure are both outside the reach of a single app store or payment processor is a meaningfully different thing from YouTube or TikTok, where demonetization is a routine enforcement tool.
