Kicktrolling

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kneon/crimson-rhen-of-the-truth-north/posts/681517

by darkstar999 • 13 years ago

265 81 13 years ago

kghose• 13 years ago

I don't understand why kickstarter can not deduct the money from the card/account and hold it until the deadline passes. If the goal is not met all the money is refunded.

lotyrin• 13 years ago

I believe that it's because of card processing fees don't work out in that situation. They'd lose money on failed projects.

jxf• 13 years ago

That costs Kickstarter more money than waiting until the end.

If Kickstarter deducts in advance and refunds later for a failed campaign, then it must do two credit card transactions: once to charge the money, and another to refund it. Additionally, refunds are sometimes more expensive than charges.

Not only that, but Kickstarter would also have to worry about situations like, e.g., Alice pledges money, and then later closes her card account. How would Kickstarter get the money back to Alice?

So it's almost certainly done for reasons of simplicity and avoiding legal/ethical obligations about safeguarding the money in escrow.

sniperkic• 13 years ago

Indiegogo has surmounted those obstacles and charges a pledge when it is made then refund slater if the campaign doesn't succeed. That might be a competitive advantage going forward.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 13 years ago

They could reserve the funds in the account (like most sites do), right?

mitchellh• 13 years ago

I don't have a document handy, but it is in Visa's merchant ToS (at the least, I don't know about other CC companies) that you can't actually charge a credit card until the good they are paying for has been shipped to them.

This is why when you order things online, your credit card is typically not charged (i.e. Apple pre-orders) until your item has shipped.

IANAL so I don't know how certain things work such as Tesla deposits (what did they "ship" to you for $2,500?) and so on. But I've heard this is why Kickstarter can't do this directly.

I'm sure there are ways around it, but something to keep in mind.

kbenson• 13 years ago

That doesn't seem to make sense. The funded parties generally aren't sending you anything immediately after it's funded either. You're backing a project which eventually may send you an item, after it's been created in some way.

shalmanese• 13 years ago

This is why Kickstarter is not a store. A pledge is not the purchase of a good, it's a donation towards a goal with an optional reward attached to it.

steven2012• 13 years ago

That is money transmission. Once the money leaves the credit card it needs to stay out of the control of kickstarter otherwise they become money transmitters and that's becomes a huge can of worms for them.

_s• 13 years ago

I know a few crowd funding websites that place an authorisation on your card, but release it if the campaign is unsuccessful.

driverdan• 13 years ago

To help solve this problem they could do an auth once the project reaches the time limit of their auth requests (eg 7 days before the project ends). Anyone who has the auth fail would be placed in limbo and their pledge withdrawn until they add a valid card. That way the project creators would know exactly how much money they could get if no one pulls out.

loceng3• 13 years ago

Does anyone know if this is a regular occurrence?

interstitial3• 13 years ago

It definitely is. I was bookmarking them once. There's even a snarkier version -- a kicktroll bids at the final second to $1 of funding a failing project. Yes, there is a project that got $49,999 of a $50,000 goal, with a very large troll donation in the last seconds. The owner of Kicktraq (who might read these boards), has a good knowledge of it. He seems to be some kind of savant, and can remember so many campaigns.

Cort3z• 13 years ago

So a meta troll would be the pledge a few dollars the last second of every failing kickstarter? That would be great fun!

loceng3• 13 years ago

I didn't realize Kicktraq was a site. Thanks.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

I predicted this might happen earlier this year (not that it's particularly hard to predict):

"You could sabotage some Kickstarter projects by pledging a large amount then blacking out a minute before it ends."

https://twitter.com/tlrobinson/status/305017672226205697

Interestingly, Bitcoin has features to make this sort of thing impossible, even without a trusted intermediary holding onto the funds: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Dominant_Assurance_Contracts https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_co...

jacques_chester• 13 years ago

I don't know if swapping easily-observed troll risk for impossible-to-predict currency exchange risk is a net win.

interstitial3• 13 years ago

You can't back out in the last 24 hours if it takes a project under funding. Trust me, this isn't new and it's been debated in circles outside HN for a long while (I could list dozens of kicktrolled campaigns). The consensus is one of the reason Kickstarter is winning the crowdfunding game is it is possible to back out -- if they change that, they change the game. This gives consumers more freedom. But I think extra large amounts need new rules -- or just forbid them (as painful as that is).

gavinballard• 13 years ago

Perhaps an extra degree of verification for pledges beyond a certain value?

bambax• 13 years ago

Or allow campaigners to refuse pledges / backers? That would seem to be quite easy and also justified.

Kickstarter is not a shop, it's a way to meet people who are interested in making you succeed; it would make a lot of sense if you could have a say in who you want to work with.

PedroBatista• 13 years ago

And therein lies the problem, these "consumers" are consuming what exactly?

The pressure to please "consumers" is too strong, and this leads to putting all the risk on the "producers" side. Which means Kickstarter will be nothing more than a weird and sucky version of Amazon.

drjacobs• 13 years ago

Nice segue to bitcoin... if there were karma here you would get it

Wouldn't Kickstarter just return bitcoins if the project was underfunded? Would fluctuations in price prevent this?

VMG• 13 years ago

You could even allow backing out and limit trolling by adding a small cost to back out.

This works in the economic sense, not necessarily in the regulatory.

johncampbelljr• 13 years ago

This is an interesting idea. And if the fee to back-out is proportional to the pledge even better.

speg• 13 years ago

I don't see why not, you see it all the time in the real world. e.g., book a vacation with a X% non-refundable deposit.

grecy• 13 years ago

Good idea, but even the back-up fee is reversible on a credit card.

dagw• 13 years ago

I think the price fluctuation is the biggest problem with bitcoins in this scenario. Let's say I need to pay my parts supplier $50000 in April, how many bitcoins should I ask for today, assuming the bitcoins will be transferred to me in February? Large companies struggle with this problem even when dealing with relatively stable currencies.

Is there a functioning futures market for bitcoins yet?

001sky• 13 years ago

Is there a functioning futures market for bitcoins yet?

This is the classic solution for commodity price volatility. Both for real assets and currencies.

drakaal2• 13 years ago

Kicktrolling is becoming pretty common.

Others have written about having users dispute the charge after the funding was complete and wrecking the goal.

Kickstarter is interesting in some ways, but it is a bad deal for a great many kinds of projects. "Send a satellite to space" great for kickstarter. "We are knocking off this product know one knew was already on amazon" great for kickstarter. But most products would do better selling on Amazon using a "This product will be released on X Date" because the commissions are lower, and if you are only doing $25k for a tangible thing, you can probably get the $15k loan to do it for a lot less, and you will still know how many units you sold before you have to deliver them.

If Kickstarter is going to take such a large percentage they need to do more to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Kliment• 13 years ago

Who's going to give you a 15k loan for a first product based on a shitty marketing video? It's not 2000 anymore.

i_am_dead• 13 years ago

Friends and family

Alexx• 13 years ago

In the UK the Government has an excellent loan scheme for small business right now. 6.2% over 5 years with 1 year capital break. You can theoretically get up to $29k if you are a pair. Though you do need a little more than a marketing video, like a functional business plan. But it's not like the banks.

drakaal2• 13 years ago

If you have $30k worth of pre-orders on Amazon. Anyone. Bank Of America, Friends and Family, An Angel VC.

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

"What if this guy "helped" us get funded by the skin of our teeth only to skip out on the bill? We'd still be short a few grand, have to deliver the project to the paying backers and be liable for Kickstarter and Amazon fees."

Wait, I don't get it. If the guy pulls out last minute, the project still won't be funded, no? So there would be no obligation to deliver anything. Am I missing something?

andrewhyde• 13 years ago

The project can be funded but if he used a wrong cc # or expired the funds won't transfer, even though the project was 'funded.'

I don't think he would be liable for KS and Amazon fees for that as they are paid instantly when the transfer happens.

makomk• 13 years ago

Yeah, apparently this happened to a jewelry project on Kickstarter a while ago - one of the big backers turned out to have used a card without enough funds and the creator wound up on the hook for all the rewards, but without enough money to make them.

neurotech1• 13 years ago

Even though such issues can be painful for the project, IMO It's good practice to allow some margin in the goal amount.

matude• 13 years ago

Maybe they Kicktrolled themselves in order to raise publicity on their misfortune? It's not easy to get on the front page of HN...

sdoering• 13 years ago

Yeah. And you have prove of your accusation, bordering clearly on calumny, in the form of what exactly?

If nothing else, you should show some decency and delete your comment, that probably was written, while half asleep.

midas007• 13 years ago

Do you realize your post sounds like nothing but complaining? Please spare us by clicking delete.

1986v• 13 years ago

I was thinking this as well, minus the HN part. It is similar to what eBay sellers would do with a hot auction. Jump in on the bidding with a second username and run the price up to where either a) someone else outbids them or b) they find the highest bid, retract the bid and then bid right under the highest bidder.

Same scenario with Kickstarter. One could set an ideal funding point and run it up with fake fundings. Catch the attention of media and then hope that the bandwagon happens getting them more than what they are asking. Once funded over the amount, back out your fake fundings and voila - funded.

jessaustin3• 13 years ago

Maybe it's because I've been to horse auctions in which bidding on your own horse is explicitly allowed, but I don't really even see anything wrong with funding-and-defunding your own project.

jsilence• 13 years ago

Kicktrolling... I'm just wondering how bored and frustrated a person must be to pull this kind of weird shit.

Seriously, I can imagine it is kind of fun to troll some overly serious dudes in a specialized forum, while I would not even waste my precious time for that. But trolling people who actually try to achieve something?

Why oh why?

PavlovsCat4• 13 years ago

Some people (think they) can't create, and settle for the lower hanging fruit of destruction, to still feel some kind of agency and power, and distract themselves from jealousy and self-loathing. Kicking a dog, trolling forums or kickstarter... it's all the same? That's my theory anyway.

tjic• 13 years ago

Thank you for crisply explaining something I've realized for some time, but have never been able to boil down to a single sentence.

vertr07• 13 years ago

That's what creators tell themselves anyway. More likely this individual had a more concrete and financial reason to do so.

raganwald2• 13 years ago

And of course, some people think they can create and engage in "disruption of old-line industries" for many of the same reasons.

a3voices• 13 years ago

A personal theory I have is that some people deep down want to act like they're in Grand Theft Auto, running around causing mayhem and destruction.

ohwp• 13 years ago

This article is full of assumptions. Maybe the backer lost a lot of money so he had to cut his fund.

We don't know anything about 'Lee' and his financial situation. So we can't make any assumptions about his motivations.

probably_wrong• 13 years ago

It's not the first time it happens - I remember seeing this problem before in HN.

IIRC from that time, this is a bigger problem when you consider that Kickstarter doesn't have any mechanismo for flagging suspicious backers, so even in the (unlikely, IMHO) case that this is an honest mistake from the backer, it will only increase once 4chan and friends hear about this.

reidmain• 13 years ago

The "Lee" character has done it dozens of times.

jamesmcbennett2• 13 years ago

What is the motivation for Kicktrolling? Who would a kicktroller be? I don't get it.

i) Person who just wants to be a dick. ii) Person with personal vendetta against the project creator iii) Company looking to fend off competitors much the way of clicking lots of links to burn through a competitors ppc on adword.

berrypicker• 13 years ago

There's a lot of hate on the internet for many kickstarter projects - "who would fund this crap?!", "how is this receiving money?!". This sort of 'trolling' is probably coming from people who don't want to see certain projects succeed. I'm sure it would happen a lot more if you didn't require proof that you actually had that much money in your bank.

jamesmcbennett2• 13 years ago

"Some men just want to watch the world burn." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHCdKb5UWc

lazyant• 13 years ago

what about the ability to reject a pledge? this way if you contact the big backer and it sounds fishy you can just ignore it.

eecsninja• 13 years ago

One solution would be to let the campaigner set an upper limit to individual pledges. That limits the damage a single troll can do. Is there such a feature?

Kicktrolling

Related Stories