Rokfin's Bizarre Behavior
Let's check back in on Rokfin, the crypto-based, ad-free video platform
Intro/Background
This is yet another follow up/companion to Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: Financial Trouble?, published September 16, 2024.
There is a companion article describing some of the challenges experienced getting paid out in crypto via the Rokfin video streaming platform, which you can find here.
There is another companion piece detailing the technical usability issues with the platform from both a livestreamer’s perspective as well as a viewer’s, which you can find here.
There was a third companion piece published on September 17 - Rokfin: Who Would Buy Them and Why? - exploring the prospect of Rokfin being on the market.
We then published two more updates in October (Rokfin October Update: Not Looking Good & Rokfin Pays SHORT & STILL Ghosting INN), at which time we made the decision to stop putting new content on Rokfin.
What’s Been Happening With Rokfin Since October 15?
We published our last update about Rokfin on October 15, 2024. On October 25, I sent a very detailed, bulleted email to Matt, my primary contact, ccing Martin Floreani, CEO. I asked for answers to very specific questions, on the record, about the new LLC registered, about the tech issues, etc.
Within 90 minutes, I received a reply from Martin himself. This was the first time I had heard from Martin since our channel began having streaming issues in June.
His abrupt offer was to apologize that the platform wasn’t working for us, and to help us “make your transition off the platform”. He did not address one question in my list, specifically about the LLC he established in September. To my knowledge, none of the questions I asked have been addressed.
I never bothered to reply to Martin, hoping they might eventually fix up the platform, fix our channel & make it viable to add to our group of censorship-free, ad-free platforms. We only had one paid subscriber, who canceled the following month.
Other than the videos that already sit there as an archive, we haven’t missed it much - nor have we missed the challenge of converting the crypto to usable cash. We haven’t heard much of anything from anyone at Rokfin since the October email exchange, save for seeing them promote some NCAA wrestling stuff in November and December.
has continued to not stream there and they have made zero effort to communicate with us, or, to our knowledge, ANY creator in the independent space since - unless they are asked a direct question.Rokfin’s Bizarre Response to a Top Creator
Steve Poikonen is the founder and host of Slow News Day, one of the most successful channels on the Rokfin platform in the “Free Thinking Media” space the past 5 years. In 2023 he started a 2nd channel, AM Wakeup, which often dominates Rokfin’s “Top Views” for the month, every month. AM Wakeup started as a weekday 3-hour morning show, and has grown to an independent hub streaming 16 shows weekly, featuring more than a dozen independent creators.
I’m going to let the tweets speak for themselves. A photo essay in three parts. Parts One and Two are the back-and-forth exchange on Twitter (X) between Rokfin and Steve on February 20.
Part Three are my replies and challenges to Rokfin, which, of course, all went unanswered. Because they have no good answers, and likely muted me. Or, they’re deliberately ignoring a creator on their program.
The long and short of it here is that Steve blatantly accuses Rokfin of tanking their platform, to which Rokfin made a weak attempt to defend their behavior. Rokfin accepts zero accountability for its shortcomings and offers zero solutions.
They offered to “Offboard” Steve and his channels if they’re not happy. Slow News Day and AM Wakeup were producing thousands of dollars in tips monthly for Rokfin.
Part I: Steve appeals to Rumble & Rokfin gets upset when Steve claims they are deliberately tanking their platform
Part II: Rokfin’s “Explanation” - Resulting in an offer to “Offboard” Steve and his highly successful channels
Part III: I jump in to ask all the questions and lay it all out, responding to each of their replies to Steve.
We talked about the exchange on AM Wakeup on Friday, February 21.
https://www.indiemediatoday.com/p/indie-joined-am-wakeup-022125-fri?r=539iu
Indie joined AM Wakeup to talk about Rokfin & Video Platforms
Segment was in the 3rd hour - Watch the full livestream on the AM Wake Up channel on Rumble here:
Focus on Wrestling; College and Professional
Rokfin seemingly continued to focus on the college sports space, which we documented. Their Rokfin Twitter (X) account has not made an original tweet since December 24, 2024. On the other hand, the X account for the NCAA wrestling has been very active and never stopped supporting college athletes. They even dabbled into Professional Wrestling (like Greco-Roman style, not WWE-AEW)
We talked about the FloSports deal to expand their NCAA wrestling coverage in October.
Channels Getting Axed?
Yesterday (February 24), it was reported that 6 active Rokfin channels all of a sudden had their follower counts wiped out, and people who tried, could not re-follow their channels. It is also being reported that the creators cannot add new content to their channels.
Was this just a glitch, or are they deplatforming people? Here are the screen shots of the channels showing 0 followers, shown to me in a telegram group last night.
Why would these active channels, some of which do have content paywalled as “premium,” get their follower counts zapped? Once again, zero communication from Rokfin publicly about this. It’s possibl that it is just a technical glitch.
Rokfin Paying in USDC, RAE Token Abandoned?
The RAE token appears to no longer be supported by Rokfin, from all appearances. Per one of Steve’s angry replies to Rokfin, they are now no longer paying out in RAE tokens, but rather USDC, or Circle, a stablecoin pinned to the US Dollar.
I went to my email and searched for the words “Rokfin” and “USDC” and found one communication, from back in June 2022:
If a creator missed this email or did not follow the steps to connect their wallet to UniSwap, they’ve been using wallet apps Coinbase or MetaMask to transact, on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. What that means is that it costs ETH to transact - and those ETH fees have become cost prohibitive as the price of ETH exploded.
Rokfin then switched to USDC, but outside of this one obscure communication in 2022, I have nothing in my emails from Rokfin mentioning USDC since this email. The company NEVER followed up with any of its creators about it?
Per Steve’s thread above, Garland Nixon was recently paid out directly in USDC and was confused when he went to look for the RAE in his wallet, only to learn that Rokfin has stopped paying in RAE. This is definitely a positive moving forward, as USDC isn’t subject to the wild fluctuation off the US Dollar - but why didn’t they communicate that they were no longer paying out in RAE? Are they sunsetting the token?
What do they plan to do for anyone with outstanding RAE tokens? Where do they even have any value at this point? I still hold about 100 RAE tokens in two separate MetaMask wallets we earned between the “Indie News Network” and “Indie at INN” Rokfin channels that I never cashed out, because it was too expensive in ETH to exchange them. That, at one point was $100 or more. It took a long time to earn that - and we’re likely NEVER going to see it. The RAE token at last count is down to $.46 and per CoinLore, “the coin is inactive. We have not got price information for it, the last time we got price info was on Feb 17, 2025. If you think this is an error, please contact at contact@coinlore.com”
Still ZERO Transparency or Unprompted Communication from Rokfin
Many independent creators on the platform remain in the dark about anything the company is up to. Creators don’t receive monthly statements, to my knowledge, breaking down what they earned in a given month & what Rokfin is taking as their cut. There have been zero of the technical issues addressed in the past 9 months, and now it appears they have started deplatforming channels that aren’t producing revenue, without explanation.
I would advise independent streamers to move toward platforms that engage with their creators like Odysee and Bitchute, or even better, move toward a self-hosted solution independent of platforms.
Looks like comedian
has decided to exit.
What’s your experience with Rokfin?
Sound off in the comments, share it to Notes and across social media and with your favorite Rokfin creator.
Watch me read through this article on How Did We Miss That and provide updates here:
I appeared on
on March 5 to discuss the article - watch that hour-long conversation here:https://www.indiemediatoday.com/p/indie-joined-hard-lens-media-rokfin-030525
Indie Media Today operates on a “Value for Value system.” Everything we do is free to all. We don’t paywall our content, but we do need - and deeply appreciate - your support in order to keep running, and one way to do that is with a monthly subscription here, if you feel you get value out of the shows & articles and can spare a few bucks a month.
Read More:
We published our last update in October: October Update: Not Looking Good!
This is a companion piece to Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: Financial Trouble?. Read that here.
Rokfin has always been challenging from a technological standpoint. To learn more about the technical challenges of the platform, CLICK HERE.
For more of a deep dive into the nightmare for a creator on Rokfin showing the insane steps to extracting actual cash from RAE tokens to deposit into a bank account, CLICK HERE
For more about who would buy Rokfin (Rumble), check this out:
Indie Media Today operates on a “Value for Value system.” Everything we do is free to all. We don’t paywall our content, but we do need - and deeply appreciate - your support in order to keep running, and one way to do that is with a monthly subscription here, if you feel you get value out of the shows & articles and can spare a few bucks a month.
Hi! I’m Indie. I champion corporate-free independent media which challenges the narratives that cable & broadcast media push on behalf of advertisers.
Founder,
Publisher, Indie Media Today &
co-host & livestream engineer of multiple shows
livestream & podcast producer
multi-platform content publisher & content distribution expert
self-taught video editor, clip producer
freelance graphic designer
independent news aggregator
Founder, the Indie Media Awards
Fiercely independent politically, anti-duopoly (or corporate UniParty).
Active & Former Rokfin Creators on Substack:
I had no idea they wiped otu my followers. WHAT THE FUCK
What are your thoughts on Odysee and their new monetisation model post-Stripe?
"The first currency we’re integrating is USDC, a USD-equivalent token with a 1:1 value to the US Dollar that can be transacted on-chain and across multiple blockchains. We’re partnering with a service that allows users to purchase USDC using their credit/debit card or bank account and transfer it into their Odysee wallet. Since USDC isn’t directly supported on Arweave, users will purchase it on the Base or BSC chains, and a service will automatically convert it and bridge to Arweave in the background."
https://odysee.com/@Odysee:8/newmonetizationmodel:6