Russell Brand announced he’s moving his show from YouTube to Rumble after he said the platform “officially censored” his content.
In the clip shared Tuesday, the 47-year-old actor explained that after his video about the “changing narratives around COVID” was taken down he’s moving to Rumble, where he will be live streaming weekdays for one hour.
“We have been officially censored by YouTube,” Brand explained. “They took down one of our videos for misinformation, but why are big media organizations not censored for misinformation in the same way? Is it because YouTube are part of the mainstream media now?”
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Brand shared that a previous clip he posted on the site was taken down because he “cited information on official government websites, which we misinterpreted” when it comes to pandemic narratives and COVID treatments. He apologized and said he made a mistake.
“We made an apology video, we’ve taken that down as well. YouTube took down our original video, we’ve taken down the apology video because in case we reiterate the claim while apologizing for it,” the comedian shared.
“We made an error, in my opinion a relatively small error, and we’re being penalized!” he added. “For me that looks like censorship, and the reason I think it looks like censorship is because there’s mainstream media misinformation up all the time.”
Brand then played a clip from March 2021 of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow saying, “now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.”
The video, titled “‘We Can Get There!’: Stunning Pace Of U.S. Vaccinations Puts Pandemic’s End In Sight,” is still on the site at the time of this publication and doesn’t include a COVID fact check, Fox News noted.
He reiterated that everyone knows now that the “truth is the vaccine does not prevent you from spreading it,” yet that video is still on the site.
A message on the CDC website reads that the vaccine is a tool to help protect people from “severe illness, hospitalization, and death.”
“So we’re asking: Is there one standard for independent news broadcasters like us on our channel and a different standard for what we would call the ‘mainstream media?'” Brand asked.
“Why are independent channels being attacked, censored and brought down,” he added later in the clip. “While mainstream media channels are being pushed, highlighted and celebrated?”
In Brand’s original video, he said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had “added ivermectin to the list of COVID treatments,” Newsweek noted.
In his last video he provided a screenshot of the NIH website that read, “Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug that is being evaluated to treat COVID-19.”
At one point, the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” star explained that both videos that were removed from YouTube are now on Rumble because that platform is “not going to censor our content.”