Rumble & Kick: Emerging Platform Strategy for UK Journalists

What Rumble and Kick are, and why some UK outlets consider them

Rumble is a video-hosting and livestreaming platform that markets itself as a lighter-moderation alternative to YouTube, having grown its audience partly through content and creators dissatisfied with mainstream platform policies. Kick is a livestreaming platform, initially built around gaming and talk-show content, positioned as an alternative to Twitch with a creator-favourable pitch on subscription revenue share.

Neither platform is mainstream in UK news consumption terms, and Reuters Institute Digital News Report data consistently shows both sit well behind YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for UK news audiences. The interest for UK regional outlets is narrower: audience diversification away from a small number of dominant, algorithm-controlled platforms, and a direct livestream option for rolling coverage of court cases, council meetings, or major local events.

This is a genuinely emerging and unsettled area of platform strategy — unlike TikTok or YouTube, there is limited established UK newsroom practice to draw on, and terms, moderation policy, and audience composition on both platforms have shifted significantly over short periods. Any decision should be treated as experimental and reviewed regularly rather than a permanent addition to the publication's distribution mix.

Monetisation and content policy compared with mainstream platforms

When considering these platforms might make sense

• 1Live coverage of local events, court verdicts, or council meetings where an unedited, direct-to-audience stream adds value alongside edited packages elsewhere.
• 2A specific, identified audience segment your outlet already knows uses one of these platforms and is otherwise hard to reach.
• 3Platform diversification as a resilience strategy, reducing total dependence on a small number of dominant social platforms.
• 4Testing a new distribution channel on a small, clearly time-boxed trial before any larger commitment of editorial resource.

Ethical and moderation red flags

• ⚠Brand association risk: both platforms have hosted content and communities that a mainstream UK newsroom may not want its name publicly linked to, through adjacent recommendations or comment sections.
• ⚠Weaker or less predictable moderation than established platforms, increasing the risk of harassment in comment sections beneath a journalist's own content.
• ⚠Less mature reporting and appeals tooling if content is wrongly removed or a journalist is targeted by coordinated abuse.
• ⚠Monetisation terms and policies that can change faster and with less notice than on larger, more heavily scrutinised platforms.
• ⚠Audience data and demographics that are harder to verify independently than for YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, making reach claims difficult to check.
• ⚠Perception risk with sources and the public: association with a platform's wider reputation can affect trust in the outlet's reporting, regardless of the content itself.

Before publishing on Rumble or Kick: a decision checklist

• Editorial sign-off obtained at senior level before establishing a channel, given the reputational dimension.
• Current community guidelines and moderation policy reviewed directly on the platform's own site, not assumed from past reputation.
• A clear, narrow purpose defined for the channel (e.g. specific live-event coverage) rather than a general mirror of other social accounts.
• Comment moderation and harassment-response plan in place before the first stream or upload.
• Monetisation terms read directly from the platform's current creator pages, not from third-party summaries, before any revenue is factored into planning.
• A review point set (for example, three months) to reassess whether the channel is delivering enough value to continue.
• Content archived independently in case of platform-side removal or policy change.

Tool recommendations

Common mistakes

• ›Committing significant editorial resource before running a small, time-boxed trial.
• ›Assuming audience demographics match assumptions from mainstream-platform experience without checking available data.
• ›Underestimating harassment risk in less-moderated comment sections and not preparing a response plan in advance.
• ›Treating monetisation figures quoted by third parties as current — always confirm directly on the platform's own pages.
• ›Failing to set a review point, leaving an under-performing channel running indefinitely without editorial value.
• ›Not considering how association with the platform's wider reputation could affect source trust or reader perception of impartiality.

Frequently asked questions