In a statement, video hosting service similar to YouTube, with business headquartered in Longboat Key, Florida, and Toronto, said its users in France would no longer be able to access the site in response to censorship demand by Paris.
"Recently, the French Government demanded that we remove certain Russian news sources from Rumble. As part of our mission to restore a free and open internet, we have committed not to move the goalposts on our content policies," the statement read,
The company said it would "challenge the legality of" demands made by the French government.
For those who came in late, after Russian invaded Ukraine on February 24, the US and iEuropean sanctions on Moscow included bans on Russian state media outlets including Sputnik and RT. RT rushed to Rumble when it was deplatformed everywhere else.
Rumble said the decision would not impact the company materially, since just less than one percent of its user base was viewing videos from France, and we guess a large chunk of its US audience could not find France or Russia on the map.
However it hoped that Paris would reconsider its demand and allow the company to resume its services without censorship in the European country.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said "like Elon Musk, he also "won't move our goal posts for any foreign government. Rumble will turn off France entirely (France isn't material to us) and we will challenge the legality of this demand."
According to Wackypedia Rumble is a better-funded and more mainstream direct competitor to video hosting site BitChute and Odysee, as all three include misinformation and conspiracy theories. Rumble moderates more content by suppressing results when searching for some keywords associated with hate speech or extremism, although the content itself is still accessible.
We doubt that the French will lose much sleep over it as it just gets rid of one 'amburger eating social notworking site. Legally the right to censor Russian propaganda has been well trodden in France.
In late July, the Grand Chamber of the EU court rejected RT France's appeal to overturn the decision of the Council of the European Union on a temporary ban on broadcasting content, prompting Moscow to condemn the decision.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the decision means that the highest EU court has officially recognised politically motivated repressions against the mass media.
She claimed that there was no evidence that the Russian media had violated anything, well other than the boundaries of a nation state, and the move "indicated an irreversible devaluation of European norms and values as well as the decline of the EU justice system."
Ironically, we found this story on an Iranian news site.