Kick surges to 12 million signups and cuts “unnecessary exposure” to controversial categories

Kick now lets users block gambling and hot tub streams sitewide.

The platform–which has been working overtime to pitch itself as a viable alternative to Twitch–was co-founded by Stake.com co-founder Ed Craven, and since the beginning has made it clear that, unlike Twitch, it’s a haven for gambling streams.

But it seems to have realized rampantly promoting gambling might not be the best move. In a June 30 tweet, Craven said Kick has overall “removed some unnecessary exposure to gambling related content throughout our recommended formula’s [sic].” On July 3, Kick followed up by adding two toggles where users can choose to block all Slots & Casinos streams and/or all Pools, Hot Tubs & Bikinis streams.

Kick’s official account retweeted the toggle announcement, saying, “From tweet to feature within 48 hours, keep the ideas coming!”

It then later re-promoted the toggle in meme form, using HasanAbi holding a baby goat to represent people who toggle off gambling/hot tub streams, and xQc to rep people who want to see them.

The only eyebrow-raising bit with that is HasanAbi’s (supposedly) blocked from ever getting a Kick account, so Kick’s decision to put him up next to the guy it’s paying $100 million to stream on its platform is interesting.

Hasan quote-retweeted the meme, adding, “at this point kick has promoted me more than twitch lmao.”

Kick responded with two green heart emojis.

In another recent tweet, Kick gave an update on its user stats, saying that in the past month, it’s gone from 5 million to 12 million signups, has quadrupled its number of active streamers, and has “seen $5,000,000 in subscriptions.”