Conservative Platform Rumble Is The Target of Short Seller Allegations The Company Calls 'False Innuendos'

The video platform Rumble Inc. RUM, which went public in a de-SPAC deal last month, is down 15% Thursday afternoon alongside a fresh short report on the stock from The Bear Cave. 

It should be noted the short analysis was released at approximately 10:45 a.m. ET Thursday, and shares are possibly dropping in response to yesterday's dip below the $8 level on news of an offering of 8.05 million shares of the company's stock.

Rumble, which is seen as a more traditional YouTube competitor, has had trouble integrating popular material, according to the Bear Cave short report.

Related Link: Elon Musk Says Russell Brand Makes 'Good Point' On YouTube Censorship, But He's A 'Little Preoccupied' To Rumble

What Happened: Rumble, led by CEO Chris Pavlovski, has drawn notice this year as a competing YouTube platform and after it announced a partnership with Truth Social, the social media site of former President Donald Trump that is going public via SPAC through Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC.

The Bear Cave’s report cited a Seattle Times story from August 2021 that said Rumble paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to have some creators join their platform; despite large incentives for content creators to join the platform, “many of them haven’t gone too far,” said Edwin Dorsey, The Bear Cave author.

“For example, Journalist Glenn Greenwald hasn’t posted on Rumble since June,” Dorsey said.

Rumble gave exclusive comments to Benzinga following Dorsey’s report, disputing its very premise, saying he didn’t perform the most basic research before issuing the short analysis.

“If the Bear Cave author had bothered to contact us — or Glenn Greenwald — he would have learned that Greenwald’s videos routinely receive more unique views on Rumble than YouTube,” Rumble said to Benzinga.

“Engaging in this basic journalistic function would also have revealed that Greenwald has not been posting due to his husband’s life-threatening illness — and plans to resume soon,” Rumble added.
Dorsey’s report outlined the fact that none of top 20 most-viewed videos on Rumble are from 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022.

“It is also no surprise that many top videos on Rumble have been on the platform for several years, giving them more time to accumulate views,” the company told Benzinga. “This is no different from YouTube, where many of the most-watched videos were posted prior to 2018.”

Several of Rumble's top content creators are profiled in the Bear Cave research, including comedian Bridget Phetasy, Siraj Hashmi, Mujahed Kobbe, Shant Mesrobian, and Zaid Jilani. According to the report, each of these creators either doesn't update much or has scant viewership for their videos.

Rumble said Dorsey cherry-picked the data, saying, “The Bear Cave author also ignored Rumble’s statistics on many popular creators like Dan Bongino, Russell Brand, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and RSBN. These five creators’ videos have been watched by nearly 20 million unique viewers in September alone.”

Dorsey goes on to say that Rumble chooses to empahsize its viewership and content data to its investors over its financial results. Rumble said Dorsey intentionally misled readers, as Rumble’s “focus has been and will continue to be growing users and usage consumption, and not maximizing revenue.”

Rumble issued a statement yesterday relating to the offering, saying that it is not raising new money or changing lockup agreements with its registration statement.
RUM Price Action: Shares of Rumble were down 15.44% at $6.90 Thursday afternoon. 

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