Kick Co-Founder Says Twitch Uses Double Standards in Ban Lifting

Bijan Tehrani, the co-founder of Kick, has long been critical of Twitch, so much that when the Amazon-owned streaming platform began banning gambling streamers en masse, he launched his own venture, offering them harbor from over-restrictive rules.

Twitch Needs to Treat All Streamers the Same, Says Kick Founder

Since then, Tehrani has been involved by commenting on Twitch’s public decisions regarding ban policies and, expectedly gambling. He has also issued a clear challenge to the platform – Kick would either defeat or buy out the firm in the end.

Yet, Tehrani’s latest comment has to do with Twitch’s bans and how they are meted out. He specifically raised an issue with the way Twitch treated HasanAbi, who was unbanned by the platform only after a 24-hour suspension, while offering much stricter penalties to other, more popular streamers.

Tehrani explained that he was not advocating for HasanAbi to have received a ban that is not proportionate to his transgression, but rather to have all streamers treated equally. He insisted that the platform seemed to mete out harsher punishments on some streamers without proper justification, while treating others in a much more lenient manner.

Tehrani used the HasanAbi case to once again illustrate that Twitch had shown bias and pointed out that rival platform Kick was much more equitable and fairer when it came to treating people equally. He said that fighting a monopoly was not an easy task, but one that was worth pursuing.

Kick Offers Equal Footing Regardless of Politics and Religion

Tehrani has long promoted Kick as a fairer alternative to Twitch. Kick has no issue with gambling content, for example, as it allows users to filter such content and exclude it from their feeds if they do not want to see it. It all comes down to personal choice.

Tehrani similarly cited the case of Adin Ross, who was banned for two years over “unmoderated chat.” Ultimately, Tehrani has vowed that Kick will protect the interests of all streamers regardless of their affiliation, religion, or politics.

Right now, Kick is also attempting to buy out TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video company, which has been asked to sell ownership to a US company instead.