Though they would have you believe otherwise, traditional social media platforms remain fertile grounds for right-wing ideas—and misinformation. Conservatives complain of censorship and deplatforming, but often from the very platforms they say are biased against them: Provocateurs like
Ben Shapiro and
Sean Hannity consistently
dominate Facebook. MAGA lawmakers like
Ted Cruz and
Marjorie Taylor Greene have all but replaced governing with
tweeting. And there has been a
great deal of
reporting on the role YouTube has played in amplifying alt-right extremist content. Republicans can cry about anti-conservative bias on social media, but the tech companies they love to hate have been an important part of their project over the last decade.
Still, it
is true that these digital spaces have changed in recent months.
Donald Trump was
kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook after instigating a deadly riot on Capitol Hill and has basically been reduced to blogging to give voice to his every stray thought. The companies have shown a little
more assertiveness in rooting out conspiratorial content. And, at least for a time, Apple, Google, and Amazon
iced Parler, the “free speech” social media app many Trump supporters had defected to. Claims of anti-conservative deplatforming are overstated, but the right is beginning to find that at least some standards are finally being enforced on traditional sites.
Enter
Peter Thiel and
J.D. Vance. Increasingly influential figures in the MAGA universe, the pair recently made
“significant” investments in Rumble, according to the
Wall Street Journal, giving a further boost to the video-sharing platform that is becoming a home for many on the right. “This will be a major play against Big Tech,” Rumble Chief Executive
Chris Pavlovskitold the
Journal of the reported investments. Rumble did not say how much money Thiel and Vance had pumped into the insurgent YouTube alternative. But the involvement of prominent figures on the MAGA right could bestow a level of Trumpworld legitimacy on the Toronto-based company, which a
Wired investigation this month found to be a prolific promoter of misinformation and toxic content.
Thiel, who is still on the board at Facebook, has been parlaying his status as Silicon Valley’s biggest Trump supporter into a role as a
Republican megadonor, seemingly interested in playing a part in the GOP’s push to take back the House and Senate in 2022. Vance, the venture capitalist who came to the public consciousness with the memoir
Hillbilly Elegy, may soon be a key component of that project, with Thiel providing financial support for the author’s potential Senate bid in Ohio. Having previously capitalized on Trump’s rise by purporting to be a kind of window into the disaffected white working class for out-of-touch elites blindsided by the 2016 election, Vance has more recently capitalized on the kind of
online trolling that helped fuel the former president’s political movement. Vance’s style is a bit more measured, but it seems designed to produce the same effect: Piss off the libs, delight the right, and ride the ill-gotten relevance to power.
Thiel’s position on Facebook and Vance’s shit-stirring on Twitter would seem to undercut conservatives’ claims that those more established platforms have become inhospitable. But the conservatives pumping money into Rumble could allow a real alternative to grow, in a way that support from the likes of
Donald Trump Jr. and
Dan Bongino can’t. At the very least, it could allow two ambitious up-and-comers in MAGA politics to boost their reputations as right-wing power-players.
