(SeaPRwire) –   By: Lucas Caldwell

This isn’t just a story about two bad streamers hurting a vulnerable man. It’s a story about a platform that built its growth on ignoring abuse for clicks and cash. Most big livestream platforms talk a big game about responsible content moderation. Kick has never even tried to hide that it cuts corners to attract controversial, high-engagement creators. This French court ruling just pulled back the curtain on that ugly business model for the entire world to see.

46-year-old Raphael Graven, known online as Jean Pormanove, died on August 18, 2025. He died while two co-streamers, Safine Hamadi and Owen Cenazandotti, slept during a live broadcast on Kick. Prosecutors later ruled his death came from poor health and a fragile heart, not direct abuse from the pair. A Nice criminal court convicted the two men of violence and incitement to hatred, but cleared them of manslaughter and exploiting Graven’s frailty. Hamadi got 18 months suspended and a €5,000 fine, Cenazandotti got two years suspended and a €15,000 fine. Both are banned from social media for six months.

For months, Graven was subjected to beatings, humiliation, and degrading challenges on stream. Viewers could pay extra to encourage more severe stunts. The entire arrangement turned abuse into a lucrative entertainment product for everyone involved. Graven earned around €265,000 from his streams between 2021 and 2025. The pair claimed all the abuse was scripted and done with Graven’s full consent. The channel had been reported to authorities dozens of times before his death. Kick even actively promoted some of its most extreme content to grow its audience.

Kick positions itself as the “free speech” alternative to stricter platforms like Twitch. It attracts creators who get banned or demonetized elsewhere by promising lighter moderation and higher revenue cuts. This is a classic race to the bottom for user engagement. The platform saves massive amounts of money on moderation by hiring as few staff as possible. It doesn’t care what content it hosts, as long as it keeps users scrolling and ad revenue rolling in. This intentional under-moderation isn’t a mistake. It’s core to the platform’s growth strategy to steal market share from bigger competitors.

French regulators found Kick employs only 75 moderators total. None of them speak French. That’s a platform with millions of global users, and it can’t even moderate content in one of Europe’s largest languages. After Graven died, Kick even briefly restored the channel’s public access, doubling down on its disregard for widespread public outrage. Now French regulators have opened formal investigations, and arrest warrants are out for some of Kick’s top management. This isn’t an isolated incident of a few bad actors. It’s the inevitable outcome of a business model built on ignoring harm for profit.

Unregulated platforms that chase growth by normalizing violence and exploitation will collapse under their own lack of accountability.

Author bio: Lucas Caldwell, a tech opinion leader covering platform content moderation and monetization ethics for millions of followers on X/Twitter.