Kick co-founder claims Twitch had a much more sinister reason to ban Adin Ross

On February 26, 2025, Kick co-founder, Bijan Tehrani, went on record through his X account to claim that the reason behind Adin Ross' permanent ban from Twitch in 2023 was that the platform did not wish for Adin's native viewers to become Kick converts. In 2023, Adin Ross was banned for having controversial messages sent by his viewers in an unmoderated chatbox.

Tehrani posted a message stating that Twitch, in an effort to combat Kick's competition, decided to keep Ross banned, preventing viewer traffic from redirecting to its adversary:

"The real reason Adin got perma-banned after switching to Kick was not 'unmoderated chat' it was to stop Adin from pushing Twitch viewers over."

It should be noted that Twitch's CEO, Dan Clancy, called Kick a "downright copy" of his streaming website. That being said, recent reports link Twitch's stagnant growth to the rise of other services like Kick. Clancy further clarified that the name of the game, in this case, is to retain viewership, or "compete for time".

At the time of his ban, Adin Ross was actively streaming on both Twitch and Kick, a platform in which he holds equity.

Given his long-standing involvement with gambling content — a genre that Twitch had begun cracking down on — it made strategic sense for him to transition to Kick, which is financially backed by Stake, an online casino. This context adds another layer to his move, as Kick's more lenient policies aligned better with his content style.

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Twitch decides not to unban Adin Ross following their latest violation policy update

The ban was categorized under "hateful conduct" by the platform due to the display of racist and antisemitic messages. The platform's new guidelines for violations gave fans hope, expecting Twitch to unban the streamer on the two-year anniversary of his suspension, based on the policy updates, stating that bans due to "hateful conduct" will expire in "1 or 2 years."

Even though the policy was updated to become more lenient towards cases like Ross', the streamer still does not expect to return, despite having expressed expressed wishes to do so.

From an analytics standpoint, Adin Ross is currently averaging over 63,000 viewers per stream with over 1.5 million followers. His streaming schedule though, has been fairly inconsistent, considering the last time he went live was on February 11, 2025.