Kick

Is Kick safe?

Kick is safe enough for an adult who mostly watches gaming streams and keeps money out of it, but it is a weaker choice than Twitch for anyone younger or anyone who gambles. It allows casino streams, is owned by the founders of the crypto casino Stake, and is under criminal investigation in France after a streamer died on camera. We score it 46/100, below Twitch at 53 and above Bigo Live at 40.

Kick is run from Melbourne, and Crikey reported in 2023 that its shareholder, Easygo Entertainment, is directed by Stake co-founders Bijan Tehrani and a holding company of Ed Craven. That link matters because it shapes what the platform allows.

Gambling streams and who sees them

Kick's community guidelines allow gambling content, including affiliate links and paid sponsorships, as long as the casino holds a licence where the streamer lives and the stream carries an 18+ label. Minors may not take part in gambling, the guidelines say. But anyone can create an account from 13 (under 18 with a parent's permission), and a teenager browsing a gaming channel can reach a slots stream in seconds. Kick is also a defendant in a suit the Los Angeles City Attorney filed in August 2025 in the name of the People of the State of California against the sweepstakes casino Stake.us, its owners, its game suppliers and its identity-check firm, under California's unfair competition and false advertising laws. The complaint alleges that Kick recruited streamers, including Californians, to gamble on Stake.us live and promote it, and it seeks an injunction, restitution and civil penalties. The case is pending and the claims are untested, but a public prosecutor suing for the public counts as a pending government suit in our scoring.

Apple rates the app 16+, citing frequent mature or suggestive themes and occasional simulated gambling, sexual content and nudity. Google Play shows it as Teen. Neither label tells a parent that real-money casino content is part of the product.

The death of Jean Pormanove

Jean Pormanove, a French streamer, died on 18 August 2025 after about twelve days of continuous live streaming on Kick. His channel showed other streamers abusing and humiliating him on camera, and the two co-streamers now face charges of group violence and abuse of weakness. Nice prosecutors had already opened an inquiry into two co-streamers in December 2024, before his death; they were taken into custody in January 2026.

The case against the platform is separate. Paris prosecutors opened an investigation on 25 August 2025, and on 27 January 2026 the Paris prosecutor turned it into a judicial investigation of Kick and its managers. The offences named are providing an illegal online platform, organised money laundering, failing to help a person in danger and distributing images of violence. Prosecutors said they had found suspicious money flows that suggest Kick directly funded the channel, and they asked for arrest warrants because no Kick representative answered summonses. None of this is a conviction.

The French government also sued to suspend Kick for six months. On 19 December 2025 the Paris court refused, finding a block disproportionate, while keeping Pormanove's channels offline. France's media regulator, Arcom, said it could not act directly because Kick is based in Australia. Kick says it banned the co-streamers and removed all related content.

One trap if you look up Kick and Ofcom: the £800,000 Online Safety Act fine of February 2026 went to Kick Online Entertainment S.A., which runs an adult site, not to Kick the streaming platform.

Moderation by the numbers

Kick's 2025 transparency report says users filed 1,408,461 reports and moderators acted on 44,055 of them, or 3.13%. Kick blames bots and false reports for the low share. It suspended or banned 428,899 accounts, mostly for spam, but also for minors streaming without an adult or in 18+ categories such as chat roulette. Its AI tools flagged about 21,000 live streams for review, and 1,619 were ended. Human moderators work around the clock and review everything the AI flags, Kick says, and it renewed a partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation.

In Australia, eSafety listed Kick among the 10 platforms covered by the under-16 social media ban from 10 December 2025. Kick now asks Australian viewers to confirm their age through k-ID, by face estimation, ID or card.

What Kick does with your data

The store labels look tame. Apple's label lists only email and phone number linked to you, with no tracking section, and Google Play says the app collects no data at all. The privacy policy, last changed in May 2026, says something different. Kick works with ad networks that collect data on and off its services and across your devices, may share a hashed email or user ID with ad partners and social networks to target you there, and uses Google Analytics and DoubleClick cookies. Because the policy discloses far more than the labels, we score privacy on the policy.

To correct or delete data, the policy points you to a support email and warns that it may not be able to delete everything. Two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login with an authenticator app is available but optional, and is required only to change your username.

How to use Kick more safely

1. Turn on two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login in Settings, Security, with an authenticator app.
2. For a teenager, block Kick or set store limits; the Teen label on Android understates gambling and mature content.
3. Stay out of the Slots and Casino categories, and never follow a streamer's affiliate link to sign up for a casino.
4. Switch off personalised ads in Kick's preferences and refuse tracking in your phone settings.
5. Report streams that show real violence, and if you are worried about someone, use the crisis resources Kick links in its Safety Hub.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (30) is the weakest factor because gambling is part of the product and a death followed months of streamed abuse. Privacy (40) reflects a policy that allows cross-site ad targeting despite labels that claim almost nothing. Regulatory record (66) is the strongest factor, but it sits in our band for pending government suits because of the Los Angeles case; France's criminal investigation is serious, but there is no charge, fine or block so far. For a platform with stricter gambling rules, see Twitch; for video with a longer moderation record, see YouTube.