One viewer whispered on the livestream: ‘Yes, keep going… Keep going’. Moments later, Jean Pormanove was dead.
Last Sunday night around 10,000 people watched as 46-year-old Raphaël Graven slumped forward on camera, unresponsive. As he died the chat spiralled into a frenzy, as the moment was streamed from a quiet village north of Nice in the French Alpes-Maritimes. Nobody called for help. Nobody stopped the broadcast. By the time the authorities arrived in the once quiet village, Graven was dead.
Pormanove’s death risks becoming a convenient pretext to tighten control over domestic media while leaving global platforms untouched
Raphaël Graven, better known by his online alias Jean Pormanove or ‘JP’, was a former French soldier who had reinvented himself as a controversial ‘trash streamer’. For months, he built a massive following, often with over 500,000 viewers, by broadcasting raw, unfiltered humiliation and extreme challenges. These involved physical abuse from co-streamers or self-inflicted stunts, all designed to elicit donations from an audience craving the chaotic and the shocking. His final stream, a gruelling 12-day endurance marathon lasting nearly 300 hours, exemplified this. He was subjected to beatings, verbal assaults, and exposure to substances like paint and oil. Pormanove appeared increasingly exhausted before slumping forward unresponsive on camera. An autopsy later confirmed no traumatic injuries or direct violence as the cause of his death, pointing instead to a possible medical crisis, such as a heart event, potentially worsened by the cumulative toll of sleep deprivation and his ongoing mistreatment.
Pormanove’s death could have been a fleeting tragedy, but in France it has ignited a political firestorm. Kick, an Australian platform launched in 2022, has grown at startling speed by offering creators a largely unmoderated space with high payouts. Its business model is simple. The more shocking the content, the more viewers tune in and the more money flows.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has denounced Kick as ‘an economy of abominations’ and promised new measures to punish platforms that ‘profit from death and humiliation’. Clara Chappaz, France’s Minister Delegate for the Digital Affairs, rushed to defend her record, insisting that the country is already a pioneer in online regulation thanks to the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA, a European regulation enshrined in French law, allows fines of up to 6 per cent of global turnover for platforms that fail to moderate illegal or harmful content.
Critics both left and right, from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally to the far-left La France Insoumise, accuse Chappaz of being too close to Big Tech and far too soft on enforcement. Kick is in Australia and its servers are scattered around the world. In practice, France has almost no leverage over the platform. Investigations drag on. Sanctions are rare. Platforms without a physical presence in France know it.
The case has thrown Arcom, France’s media regulator, into the spotlight. On paper, Arcom polices everything from television to streaming platforms. In practice, it focuses almost entirely on domestic broadcasters. CNews has been fined repeatedly for political bias as I’ve previously written about here. Arcom has aggressively pursued the right leaning network for ‘offensive’ language or inviting guests outside the approved ideological mainstream. But when a man dies live on Kick in front of thousands of French viewers, Arcom is virtually powerless. It can’t meaningfully sanction a platform in Australia. It barely even monitors them.
The establishment’s response in the past couple of days has been to exploit this tragedy and to prepare to profit from it politically. The political instinct is to tighten control where regulators still can – over domestic outlets. Pormanove’s death risks becoming a convenient pretext to tighten control over domestic media while leaving global platforms untouched. While Kick continues to stream chaotic videos into French homes, CNews and other right-leaning outlets will face harsher rules, heavier fines and stricter oversight.
This is the fundamental absurdity. The problem isn’t a lack of regulation but the collapse of the old model of control. For decades, France curated its media space, with rigid broadcast licensing and generous media subsidies. Those means of control are disappearing. A far-flung platform can now broadcast more of less anything into a French living room, and it is beyond the reach of the Paris regulator. Meanwhile the same regulator is punishing the few broadcasters they can still touch, imposing vastly heavier standards and restricting free speech.
Jean Pormanove’s death was a tragedy. But the greater tragedy would be if France uses his death to shackle free speech at home, while global platforms like Kick continue on regardless.
Comments