After a controversial year, it looks like Kick is trying to clean up its act. The platform has garnered a reputation as Twitch’s edgier sibling, becoming the home for divisive streamers banned on other platforms like Adin Ross, who was kicked off Twitch due to continuous “hateful conduct.”
But amid Kick streamers’ joyrides, bad behavior at conventions, and the inclusion of minors on inappropriate streams, the site is making a small change to address bad behavior on the platform.
As part of its August 10 update, Kick has introduced an optional AI-powered content moderation tool. Through machine learning, the tool can detect messages that creators deem unwanted or inappropriate for their community.
Creators are now able to toggle the filtering level of language across several categories, including hate speech, spam, gibberish, sexual, weapons, violence, and drugs.
You’ll be able to toggle filtering on four levels: “no filtering,” “some filtering,” “more filtering,” and “max filtering.” As shown in a video by Kick, messages deleted by this feature will have a “deleted by AI” label.
“This is optional for all channels, but would recommend everyone at least testing this feature!” Kick co-founder Ed Craven said in a post on X. “It will at minimum make your mods jobs a tiny bit easier and it can be tailored to your liking.”
Creators react to Kick AI content moderation tool
In a livestream captured by Dexerto, Kick employee Andrew Santamaria demonstrated the new tool. But as he did so, creators in the on-screen chat described the feature as too “woke.”
This led to Santamaria saying: “You can have all this stuff in your stream still, within reason. If you want to be what you consider ‘woke,’ put the filters on. If you want to be degen, don’t put the filters on.”
But despite these concerns on the stream, creators on X seemed to react in a much more positive way. Several said this was a “W” for Kick.
“No other platform cared to make this feature for any of us,” one creator tweeted. “Thank you kick for giving us better tools to help make our streaming careers easier under your platform.”
