Craven launched Kick in 2022, having already built his fortune through Stake.com, the international casino and sports betting platform that has made him richer than News Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch.

Worth $4.7 billion, according to Australian Financial ReviewCraven is building Melbourne’s most expensive home, a Toorak mega-mansion, on a property he bought for $88 million.

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And while the Stake casino must block Australian players by law, the businessman has dabbled in domestic politics, appearing in May at an exclusive Labor Party fundraiser alongside Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

The dinner, reported by Herald Sunwas to raise money for Labor MP Michelle Ananda-Rajah, who has called gambling “a real scourge” and who last year made an impassioned speech in parliament against antisemitism.

A spokesperson for Ananda-Rajah told this masthead that the MP “has made clear her concerns about the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia” and that there is no place in Australia for hate speech, including online.

The collection took place after investigations by Herald and The age revealed allegations that Stake had exploited problem players, which Stake has denied, as well as several instances where Kick had broadcast sexually inappropriate behavior involving minors.

Kick’s 24-year-old star

Designed as a more permissive alternative to Twitch, the industry’s dominant live streaming platform, Kick has made a name for itself by sponsoring a Formula 1 racing team and signing streamers to highly lucrative contracts.

While the focus is on live entertainment, video recordings are also stored for 30 days on Kick so viewers can view them on demand.

Craven is heavily involved in Kick’s operations, hosts online discussions about content moderation policy, and personally deals with Ross, whom he calls a friend.

In a sign of Kick’s growing reach, Ross hosted an interview with Donald Trump in August, presenting him with a gold Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with a picture of the former president in the moments after the July assassination attempt.

Ross, a 24-year-old Florida resident, has a history of making transphobic comments, such as “my pronouns are (sic) dead/them”.

This year, Ross appeared on another streamer’s channel and shouted “kill yourself, f–“.

Last week he said, “Give me a gay son, I’ll spank his ass a few times and make him straight”.

Viewers of his channel often leave thumbnails, or “emotions,” containing anti-Semitic caricatures in the “chat” column of the screen.

A white supremacist and Holocaust denier

Ross, who is Jewish, has featured a number of guests with a history of making anti-Semitic comments, including American Nick Fuentes, who has been described as a white supremacist by the US Department of Justice.

Fuentes this week started his own channel on Kick, telling his audience that he had agreed with the site’s management not to include too much “political” content.

In his first stream, he used the N-word and played a clip spreading a conspiracy theory about Jews.

Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok block searches on Fuente’s name while X, formerly Twitter, allows him to have an account.

Another frequent guest on Ross’s Kick channel, “Sneako”, has a pattern of getting banned from and returning to live streaming platforms.

A Herald and Age investigation published in May found a range of sexually inappropriate behavior towards minors by Kick streamers, including Sneako, who met a couple of teenage girls online while streaming. When one said they were underage, he asked “how underage?“

Sneako, who said “down with yahud (the Jews)” on another streaming site this year, signed up for Kick again this week. In his second stream, he called the slain leader of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, “an absolute hero.”

In his first stream, Sneako performed a Hitler salute while laughing and praised Kick as a platform where he could “believe what I believe.”

Sneako also expressed disbelief at the Holocaust death toll, claiming Auschwitz was just a “labor camp” when he appeared on a stream with Ross this month. Ross refuted Sneako’s point, telling him at one point that “it’s literally not true”.

Andre Oboler, an anti-Semitism researcher and executive director of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, said Kick was “far from what we expect in terms of basic online safety” on a social media platform.

Oboler called on Kick to immediately remove anti-Semitic and other hateful material, saying the culture promoted by some users is reminiscent of the infamous image board site 4chan.

“This is a culture that is deeply anti-Semitic and promotes harm for the entertainment of others,” he said.

“Kick needs to send a strong message that such content is not welcome on the platform.”

“Our terms of use on hate speech are clear”

As the founder of Kick, Craven has invited a number of critics of the site to his own channel to discuss content moderation.

American games journalist Rod Breslau told Craven this month that Kick had a reputation for allowing harmful material, and asked if the company would draw the line at holocaust denial.

Craven made clear his personal distaste for the content. But he said it wasn’t Kick’s role to give Ross a suspension because he was just “letting that conversation happen on his channel,” rather than “inciting” it.

As Craven spoke, viewers left a number of blatantly anti-Semitic comments, including a four-letter slur against Jews.

“Encouraging or participating in bullying others under the guise of ‘just kidding’ or ‘free speech’ is counterproductive to Kick’s mission,” the company says in its community guidelines.

“Creators and chatters who engage in or promote hate speech through defamation or avowed hate speech will face enforcement action.”

In response to questions from HeraldKick said it had decided to ban the crooked “emotes” and had removed two anti-Semitic usernames for not complying with the site’s terms of service.

But the company did not respond to most of them Heralds detailed questions about individual streamers and comments, including whether the content should be allowed to remain online.

“Our terms of use on hate speech are clear, and we will remove content and take action against creators and users for breach (sic) of these terms,” ​​the spokeswoman said in a written statement.

“The presence of a particular streamer on Kick does not mean that we endorse their views, just as publishing a letter to the editor or a comment should not be construed as an endorsement of legacy media.”

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The company said its AI tool scanned 485 million unique messages last month and that content moderation was “by definition, reactive”.

“This is a challenge for any platform, including legacy media that moderate online comments, and it’s even more difficult when you have more than 40 million users creating and interacting with content every day.”

Kick said the “vast majority” of content enjoyed by its millions of users was not offensive.

Racist slurs used in the office, former staff claim

Two former employees, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said they often heard discriminatory language while working at Kick’s Melbourne headquarters.

One said Kick employees treated streamers differently based on their gender or race, and that homophobic and racist slurs were common.

“Black creators (were) called the N-word with laughter usually following, or silence,” they said.

“The women on the platform were called many times ‘whores’ and ‘thots.’

A second former employee said they heard the N-word used as a slur “maybe 10 times a week” and that most members of their team had used it.

“The kick team was very racist and immature,” the staffer said.

The claims follow claims made by another former Kick employee in a video published in June, who said there was “a consistent disrespect for other people’s opinions and beliefs”.

“This went as far as consistently hearing the F slur, and not just in jest as a joke – it was specifically aimed at people it was meant to discriminate against.”

The former employee said she also heard staff use the N-word in a meeting where senior managers were present.

There is no indication that Craven was part of the behavior described by the former staff member.

In a statement, a spokeswoman said: “We take great pride in fostering an inclusive, diverse and positive workplace at Kick”.

The spokeswoman said all claims of “insensitive” language had been investigated and only one was substantiated.

“In one instance, we took appropriate steps to ensure employees better understood the expected standards of behavior in our workplace,” she said.

Kick, which is loss-making, has said it will one day become profitable through advertising, but that ads won’t be rolled out anytime soon.

Craven has repeatedly rejected suggestions that the reason he created Kick was to promote Stake.com by paying streamers to play live on the site. But he has acknowledged that Stake has previously achieved a return on investment by paying streamers to play.

Gaming content is one of the most popular categories on Kick, and streamers like Ross openly discuss contracts that require them to play.

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