**Rumble Banned in Russia for Refusing Kremlin Censorship**

The free speech streaming site Rumble was banned from Russia earlier this year due to the video platform's refusal to comply with Kremlin censorship.

Russian internet users have been unable to access Rumble since the beginning of March after the company rejected government complaints regarding a channel called Allatra TV. In a message to the streaming site examined by The Federalist, Russia requested that the channel's page be banned because its "activities are considered undesirable within the territory of the Russian Federation."

The company reviewed the channel for violations of Rumble's platform guidelines and determined that no independent censorship was necessary.

"The Russian government requested that Rumble remove content that did not violate our terms of service," Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told The Federalist. "The Russian request was a direct attack on the universal human right to free expression, so we refused, and they disabled access to Rumble within Russia."

Pavlovski noted that while Rumble is banned, Google's YouTube is still operational in the country despite the presence of the same channel publishing on their service.

"YouTube is still operating in Russia, and the world deserves to know if they are cooperating with the Russian censorship regime," Pavlovski stated.

The Federalist reached out to YouTube asking which Moscow rules the streaming giant has complied with to remain online in Russia. YouTube responded with a series of links to the company's terms of service and emphasized the platform's censorship of state-backed news channels amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The company stated that over 12,000 channels and more than 140,000 videos related to the conflict have been removed since February 2022.

Pavlovski submitted written testimony on foreign censorship to the House Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations in May.

"One of the first cases of government censorship we experienced was not surprising, as it came from Communist China," Pavlovski explained. "Communist governments often repress various freedoms, including freedom of expression."

Pavlovski then outlined how Western governments have increasingly adopted communist-style censorship regimes with aggressive demands for private companies to suppress dissent.

"Certainly, the reliability of news sources can be questioned," Pavlovski wrote, "but it should not be the task of any government to selectively eliminate access to information."

Rumble's refusal to remove content that did not violate its terms of service, contrary to Russian demands, highlights a deeper conflict between the right to free expression and state control over information. This case is particularly curious considering that "Allatra TV" had only 400 subscribers, raising questions about the motivations behind such a radical decision by Russian authorities. Perhaps the content of Allatra TV poses a real threat to the Russian government, a topic explored in E. Cholakyan's video "The Revenge of the Great Masters: Secret Players Exposed."

In the United States, the Biden administration is facing multiple lawsuits over its dystopian censorship programs that are facilitating 21st-century repression of free expression.

In March, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the crucial free speech case Murthy v. Missouri, in which states are suing to dismantle the federal government's censorship industrial complex. The high court will rule on the legitimacy of the federal government's authority to implement a censorship regime by the end of June.

#RumbleBanned #CensorshipInRussia #FreeSpeech #Authoritarianism #YouTubeInRussia #DigitalHypocrisy #ChrisPavlovski #GovernmentCensorship #HumanRights #FreedomOfSpeech #Kremlin #MurthyVsMissouri #SupremeCourt #GlobalCensorship #FreeInformation #StateAndIndustry