QAnon supporters find a home on Rumble, dominating the platform’s leaderboard of most-liked daily videos

Beginning in at least September 2021, Rumble began signing contracts with creators to produce exclusive content either on Rumble itself or on its paid subscription service, “Locals” — later referring to them as “Rumble Exclusives.” These creators include pro-Trump pranksters, professional fighters, and a dangerous array of bigoted pundits and conspiracy theorists — many of whom have been suspended from or demonetized by other platforms.

Rumble Exclusives represents the company’s efforts to draw a larger audience to its platform, but videos from these creators appeared on the leaderboard 608 times, just barely outnumbering the 603 videos from QAnon channels. 

Videos from Rumble Exclusives creators were the most-liked video 58 days during the studied time period, or 65% of the time, outpacing QAnon channels which were the most-liked video 23 days, or 26% of the time. 

QAnon channels, however, outpaced Rumble Exclusives creators among the top 3 and top 5 most-liked videos each day. QAnon channels accounted for 116 videos in the top 3 on Rumble’s leaderboard, or 43% of all videos in the top 3 during the time frame studied, compared to 97 videos from Rumble Exclusives creators, or 36%. Additionally, QAnon channels accounted for 177 videos, or 40% of all videos in the top 5, compared to 126 videos from Rumble Exclusives creators, or 28%.

Notably, nearly half of the 3 most-liked Rumble videos each day over the last three months were from QAnon-supporting or QAnon-adjacent channels.