❘ Published: 2022-10-07T17:17:03
❘ Updated: 2022-10-07T17:17:24
It’s been almost two months since controversial influencer Andrew Tate was banned from all major social media platforms, and the numbers reflect his overall popularity has taken a drastic downturn.
On August 19, 2022, Hustler’s University founder and TateSpeech co-host Andrew Tate received a ban from Meta, removing his presence from both Instagram and Facebook. This followed a ban from Twitter years prior.
In the days that followed, Tate would also receive a ban from YouTube and TikTok, followed by a self-removal of his TateSpeech channel from Twitch. Despite being one of the most significant instances of deplatforming we’ve seen in recent history, Tate would let the world know via his new social platforms that he “didn’t feel canceled.”
But despite how the crypto trading mogul may feel, the numbers reflect a drastic dip in popularity. Once boasting the title of the most searched man on the internet, his relevance has seen a steep decline as his popularity diminishes.
Google Trends shows the interest in Andrew Tate over time with his peak being around the time of his multi-platform ban
Andrew Tate’s popularity declines after being deplatformed
Tate’s popularity peaked between August 21 and 27 in the middle of his deplatforming with the former kickboxer making headlines across the internet. But it wouldn’t take long before Andrew Tate’s search volume would drop by 60%, with his name being searched fewer and fewer times each day.
But his decline in popularity goes beyond Google’s search metrics. He’s no longer making frequent guest appearances on podcasts, he’s not been on Twitch since he removed his channel, and TikTok – where he garnered most of his followers via fan accounts – has stopped exposing its users to his content.
Outside of mainstream social media, Tate’s newfound homes on “free speech” platforms Rumble and Gettr have seen a fraction of the traction his Instagram, Twitch streams, and YouTube videos once received.
For reference, Andrew Tate posts a video on his TateSpeech Rumble channel at least once every two days. However, outside of his Emergency Meeting podcast episodes, these videos rarely break 100k views. But during his last day on YouTube, it wasn’t uncommon for the TateSpeech YouTube channel to get several hundreds of thousands of views in a single day.
However, TateSpeech on Rumble has just 100k fewer subscribers than his YouTube channel had, showing that – while the majority of his fans may have followed him over to Rumble – not nearly as many of them are consuming his content.
There has been a lot of pushback from larger personalities on the internet when it comes to deplatforming. Some free speech advocates are completely against the idea of banning someone from major sites, while others believe deplatforming doesn’t even work because that person’s ideas are still present on the internet. Yet, if statistics are anything to go by, it seems as if deplatforming Andrew Tate has caused a major blow to his relevance.