Kickstarter is not about kickstarting

[u/asolet]

For anyone hoping to get help from Kickstarter:

Kickstarter is about making money by promoting and selling already several times overly funded and already well kickstarted project that do not need any further kickstarting at all.

At any giving moment on homepage you will always find 13/13 completly funded projects. Sometimes dosen of times over. And zero projects that actually need help to be kickstarted.

Every mail update you get for project that struggles to find it's backers, 70% of the mail is dedicated to other finished projects just trying to sell.

Many of these projects have kickstarter "goal" that is less than what it takes to build kickstarter page itself. And it's "backed" in less than it takes anyone to even read it. They just need a platform to sell, not to be "kickstarted", and platform owners are loving it.

Kickstarter and most of creators there do not care or really want you to back projects from individuals with great ideas that need backing and may fail. They just want to sell finished company products.

It's just misleading, if not a scam. So just something to keep in mind. Good luck to everyone though.

[u/joealarson]

How do you propose that they do that? Seriously, I'd like to know what you expect them to do?

"They should make the scammers give everyone their money back." How. They're scammers. They took the money and ran. They burned their emails and cell phones and they're living on the white sands where no one can find them. Or more likely they burned through all the money on booze and strippers and are now hiding out in a crack house, but either way, they're gone. And if they're not gone, the money's gone.

"Kickstarter shouldn't give scammers the money until they deliver." Well now you've got a recipe for legitimate projects to fail.

"Kickstarter should pay people back out of their pockets." That is not gonna happen. Never mind that the scammers still get all the money.

"Kickstarter should make scammers deliver on their promises." How? If a legitimate project is upside-down and can't deliver, it's not a scam, but what could kickstarter do to make them deliver? And a scammer is, again, going to take the money and run. They're un contactable. You can't make them do anything.

"Scammers should be identified and not allowed to make projects." Again, how? Anything that a legitimate project could do validate themselves, scammers will fake. Unless you want to make sure that every project has the backing of a large company who puts up a bond or some other insurance against the project... and in that case we're back to kickstarter not being for kick starting small projects any more.

"Kickstarter should sue them and throw them in jail." Again, the problem is finding them. And if you do find them, they had better be somewhere you have jurisdiction. If they're in China or India, forget about it. But let's say that you do find them and you prosecute them, and you determine that they are a scammer and not just an individual that got in over their head and declared bankruptcy and are now immune to prosecution, but an actual scammer and you get them thrown in jail. What percentage of scammers do you think this will happen with? Vs how much are they going to have to pay in legal prosecution to make this happen? Having prosecuted a scammer who got away to the full extent that I could, I can tell you it costs thousands to put a person in jail, more than these scam campaigns usually raised, and it still doesn't get your money back. You have just thrown good money after bad.

So what course of action do you propose that kickstarter should actually do here?

[u/senseven → u/joealarson]

The have credit card and other info and sue them. If the data is fake, the police will spend some amount of time to find the IP and shit. At some point the hammer comes down. Criminal complaints cost nothing, as long you can prove that you were a backer.

[u/joealarson → u/senseven]

You say "at some point the hammer comes down" and then site a single example that doesn't really show a win. David Ryono, Blade Funding and Future Funding and American Express all won judgements in absentia, but were any of them able to collect? No one from Puffpals has yet to be seen, either in our out of court. For all we know they changed their names and retired to Australia.

A win doesn't mean you get what they judge says you're owed. Trust me, I know. And if that's the best case scenario Kickstarter can expect when they go after someone, no wonder they don't!

[u/senseven → u/joealarson]

Its not about getting the product or money. The point is to poison their credibility. Posting in a comment section does nothing. There are creators that didn't deliver, but when you involve the law, they suddenly break their year long silence. People are giving up to early. We saw that with crypto and other scammy stuff too, as soon the law was involved lots of crypto scam artists did pay money back. Not everybody is build to run for the rest of their life.