Raphael Graven's online death wasn't result of trauma: prosecutor

PARIS: A French video streamer who died during a livestream after days of abuse by other streamers did not die as a result of trauma or the intervention of a third party, court authorities said.

France has been rocked by the death of 46-year-old Raphael Graven, known online as Jean Pormanove, who died during a livestream on Monday after enduring several days of violence and humiliation broadcast on platform Kick.

The prosecutor of Nice in southern France, near where Graven died, said an autopsy showed no trace of traumatic injuries that could explain the death, and that the probable causes of death therefore appeared to be medical or toxicological in origin.

Further analyses have been ordered to determine these causes, the prosecutor said, adding that Graven had cardiac issues and that he was undergoing medical treatment for his thyroid gland.

In an interview with broadcaster franceinfo on Friday, Clara Chappaz, a junior minister for AI and digital technology, said that during some of the videos Graven can be heard saying that he wants the abuse to stop and that he wants to call the police.

“The entire country is in shock about what has happened … We live in a world where reality has surpassed fiction, where we can see someone dying on a TV channel and people can watch this type of video with hours and hours of humiliation,” she said.

She denounced what she called a “digital Wild West” and lashed out at Australian-owned Kick for insufficient content moderation.

“This three-year-old platform is clearly very disconnected with what is really going on,” she said, adding that if inquiries show Kick fell short of online content standards, there would be “sanctions”, which she did not specify.

Kick Francais has said it will cooperate with authorities and is undertaking a review of its French content.

Chappaz said that French digital and audiovisual communication regulator Arcom had launched an investigation into the case and if it became clear that France’s regulatory framework was insufficient, regulations would be tightened.

On Friday, Arcom said Kick had lifted the block on the channel “jeanpormanove” that the platform put in place after Graven died, saying it had done so to access its contents.

The regulator condemned the move, which also allows the public to see videos on the channel again, and warned Kick it would consider taking action if the block was not reinstated.

“Making the recordings on the ‘jeanpormanove’ channel available to the authorities does not justify lifting the channel’s block for the entire public,” Arcom said.

Kick confirmed that the channel has been unblocked and that it was now available, with the exception of the final livestream, which Kick said it had provided to law enforcement separately.

The output of the people who were livestreaming with Graven when he died remained banned, it added.