The streaming platform Kick has given all users the option to choose whether they prefer to view gambling streams while perusing the site’s different channels.
Co-founder Ed Craven announced Friday that as part of a series of updates to the site, Kick was removing “unnecessary exposure” to gambling content. He also said that users would have the ability to “toggle” gambling (and hot tub) streams and thereby remove them from their recommended feed and search results.
Craven followed up on the tweet early Monday morning and confirmed that the changes had been implemented.
Gambling streams have been a divisive topic over the past year or so. Twitch, the leading streaming platform, banned unregulated gambling streams last year, providing the motivation for some streamers to abandon the platform.
Kick has much deeper roots in the gambling world—its co-founders helped create Stake, an online crypto-based gambling platform, and were responsible for celebrities such as Trainwreck and xQc making the switch to the new platform.
Kick has also embodied the ambition to become more streamer-friendly than Twitch, whether the streamers show gambling content or not. They offer 95/5 revenue splits for paid subscribers, whereas Twitch is 50/50 and YouTube is 70/30. They also pay hourly stipends to streamers, though the exact pay is based on different criteria such as viewer count, hours streamed, and CPM.