Kick co-founder Bijan Tehrani announced on May 20, 2026 that the platform had banned the 500 most egregious viewbot abusers, collectively responsible for roughly 67 million inauthentic recurring monthly watch hours — approximately 13% of total platform watch time. In a follow-up post, Tehrani noted that an additional 12 million hours had been purged since the original figure was calculated, bringing the total above 79 million.
Key Figures
- Accounts banned: 500+
- Fake watch hours removed: 79 million+
- Share of monthly platform hours: ~13%
Top Languages by Estimated Fake Watch Hours
| Language | Estimated fake watch hours |
|---|---|
| English | 16,306,508 |
| Portuguese | 12,306,571 |
| Arabic – Mainland | 9,027,261 |
| Spanish | 5,968,859 |
| Russian | 3,734,267 |
| Arabic – New North Africa | 1,849,410 |
| Arabic – Morocco | 1,613,133 |
| Arabic – Egypt | 1,515,687 |
| Arabic – North Africa | 1,266,559 |
| Spanish – Mainland | 408,130 |
| Spanish – Mexico | 360,273 |
| Italian | 302,128 |
| German | 215,979 |
| Other | 211,143 |
| Turkish | 182,408 |
| Philippine | 97,860 |
| Albanian | 95,431 |
| French | 91,227 |
| Polish | 83,634 |
| Arabic – Jordan | 70,585 |
| Persian | 41,809 |
| Japanese | 30,144 |
| Ukrainian | 19,186 |
| Swedish | 14,608 |
| Kuwait | 10,057 |
| EU | 8,808 |
| Serbian | 2,837 |
| Hindi | 1,045 |
Algorithm Update to Follow
Tehrani also announced that an algorithm update will roll out over the following week, shifting ranking signals away from raw viewer counts toward authentic viewership metrics — reducing the incentive to purchase bots in the first place.
“This will save Kick tens of millions per year which we will redeploy to creator investment via clipping, KPP, events etc.”
— Bijan Tehrani (@BijanTehrani), co-founder of Kick, May 20, 2026
Community Reaction
Reaction from the streaming community has been mixed. Supporters praised the speed of the action, with some noting that rival platform Twitch has been slower to respond to similar issues. Critics questioned whether the banned accounts were lower-profile streamers while high-visibility names continued to operate, and called on Kick to publish the full list of banned accounts publicly.
Some users specifically named streamers they believe are still active on the platform despite suspected botting, while others urged Kick to use engagement metrics such as active chat participation rather than viewer counts as the primary measure of authenticity.
Streamers Named as Suspected Botters Active on Kick
- N3on — mentioned by multiple users (Tankyyyzz, ScuffedEmoGirls, Max Sterling, Tropah)
- Ac7ionman — called out by ScuffedEmoGirls, Max Sterling, and Prest0n, with ScuffedEmoGirls claiming “5k bots every stream” and noting Ice Poseidon publicly accused him
- Adin Ross — named by ScuffedEmoGirls
- DDG — named by Prest0n
- Wescol — named by Prest0n
- Kyootbot — named by Tropah, alleged 5k fake viewers
- Mizkif — named by Tropah, alleged 4k fake viewers
- Sam Pepper — named by Max Sterling
- Vitalyzdtv — named by Shawnaz145
- Sweetflips — named by SVJ, alleged 5.8k fake viewers daily
