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Nathan Munn's avatar

Great piece. I wonder what you think about normal folks (i.e. middle-of-the-road content producers) using Rumble? Would you suggest average users avoid it entirely due to the right-wing element, or get active on it and ideally balance out the garbage with more-liberal content, and maybe make a few bucks at the same time?

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Justin Ling's avatar

My POV is that it's almost always worthwhile to engage on neutral platforms. I wrote a bit about this idea a few years ago: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/01/bunkerchan-deradicalize-online-nazis-4chan-8chan/

But Rumble and Twitter aren't neutral. They have algorithims designed to push people to radicalizing content, not countervailing ideas. I don't think it's inherently wrong to try, but I do think you'll find yourself wasting time and energy, and you won't get paid for it.

The Biden camp tried this early in their campaign by engaging on Truth Social. It got a lot of engagement early on, then basically got ignored.

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Nathan Munn's avatar

That's really interesting about the Biden team trying to engage on Truth Social, I had no idea! And I guess it's sadly unsurprising how it turned out. Also makes sense that there's no point trying to change the narrative on a compromised platform. Thanks for the insight.

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ABossy's avatar

Such an important question. Just as some liberals have decided to grit their teeth and stay on X. I donтАЩt know about how much тАЬbalanceтАЭ it could potentially provide, but definitely important insofar as writers may need to Know their Enemy.

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