French police are investigating the live-streamed death of a man who had regularly been shown enduring violence and humiliations, raising concerns about the practice of broadcasting such content online.
Prosecutors ordered an autopsy and opened an investigation into the death of Raphael Graven, 46, in the village of Contes, north of Nice in southern France, that was broadcast on Monday on the live streaming platform Kick.
Graven, known online as Jean Pormanove, or JP, had built a following of hundreds of thousands on the platform by participating in live "trash streaming", in which he was physically assaulted or humiliated as viewers watched live and sometimes donated money.
On Monday, on the 12th day of a live stream, Graven was shown on the platform getting angry after being hit several times.
Later he was shown lying under a sheet while another man, one of two men in the room with him, known by pseudonyms NarutoVie and Safine, threw a plastic water bottle at him.
A moderator of the channel streaming the content told viewers that Graven was dead, which the Nice prosecutors office later confirmed.
“Several interviews with people present at the time of his death have been conducted without yielding leads as to its causes,” prosecutor Damien Martinelli said in a statement.
NarutoVie and Safine had been questioned by police in January in a separate inquiry, following reporting by Mediapart that they were mistreating vulnerable people online to generate revenue.
Graven was interviewed at the time as a potential victim, but he denied suffering any actual violence, Martinelli said.
Instead, Graven and another suspected victim told police the events were staged in order to generate money.
Viewers could donate money to him during the stream, and he told investigators that he earned up to €6,000 through contracts with the platform.
Minister hits out at content
France's Minister for digital affairs, Clara Chappaz, called Graven’s death online “an absolute horror” and condemned the violent content in which he had appeared online.
She said she had referred the matter to Arcom, the regulatory authority that oversees streaming platforms, as well as well as to the Pharos platform, which investigates illegal content and behaviour online. She added that she had asked the managers of the platform for explanations.
Kick, an Australia-registered live streaming platform that shares revenue with content creators, is seen as having less stringent user terms than the market leader Twitch.
The company said on Wednesday that all those involved with the death had been banned from the platform, pending the outcome of the investigation, and that it was re-evaluating its French content.
(with newswires)
