
Kicktrolling - darkstar999
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kneon/crimson-rhen-of-the-truth-north/posts/681517
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tlrobinson
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](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/Dominant_Assurance_Contracts)
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_co...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_contracts)

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interstitial
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).

~~~
bambax
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.

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jsilence
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?

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PavlovsCat
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.

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

~~~
PavlovsCat
See other reply.. I wasn't talking about creating products, sigh. _Quit
putting a dollar sign on every thing on the planet!_

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drakaal
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
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
Friends and family

~~~
schenecstasy
and fools

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kghose
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.

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jxf
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
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.

~~~
malandrew
I reckon you could charge a certain % of the pledge to prevent this kind of
trolling. You'd still be allowed to back out, but the money would stay on
Kickstarter and cannot be withdrawn, but instead just put towards another
campaign (but that money no longer counts towards the reserve of future
campaigns). This makes sure that the troller gets their money locked up in
Kickstarter. Few if any legitimate Kickstarter funders would be bothered by
this and if they really were bothered by it, Kickstarter staff could evaluate
those few incidents on a case by case basis.

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pavel_lishin
> _Few if any legitimate Kickstarter funders would be bothered by this_

Except those that only come to Kickstarter to back a specific campaign,
instead of backing lots.

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wolfgke
Then these people should better not back out.

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adamnemecek
"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?

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andrewhyde
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
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.

~~~
jessaustin
It seems like this scenario could be prevented even within the one-week pre-
auth limit cited above. That is, pre-auth every donation a week before the
campaign ends. The pre-auths that fail would then be subtracted from the
total, and a week is long enough to either pay your credit card bill or decide
that you can't contribute that much.

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ohwp
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
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.

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jamesmcbennett
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
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.

~~~
jamesmcbennett
"Some men just want to watch the world burn."
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHCdKb5UWc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHCdKb5UWc)

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loceng
Does anyone know if this is a regular occurrence?

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

~~~
loceng
I think he meant remove their $1 pledge the last second, so it would
potentially fail - or enough for it to fail.

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eecsninja
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?

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lazyant
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.

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

~~~
1986v
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.

~~~
jessaustin
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.

~~~
raganwald
I don't know how horse auctions work, but I wouldn't compare openly bidding on
your own property with using shill accounts to bid someone up and then
retracting your own winning bid.

~~~
jessaustin
Well of course the bidding isn't "open" in that sense. You don't even know
until after the hammer falls whether the final price came from a bidder or
from the auctioneer himself, in order to meet the reserve.

[http://www.keeneland.com/sales/conditions-
sale](http://www.keeneland.com/sales/conditions-sale)

Also, I stated that I found the practice of funding one's _own_ project
unobjectionable. I think defunding threatens the entire model of KS, but
defunding one's own project is the least objectionable aspect of that.
Whatever Kickstarter can do to prevent or ameliorate defunding, within the
bounds imposed by credit card practices, they should do.

