Dear everybody,

On Wednesday morning Kickstarter was sent a blog post quoting disturbing material found on Reddit. The offensive material was part of a draft for a “seduction guide” that someone was using Kickstarter to publish. The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t.

We were wrong.

Why didn’t we cancel the project when this material was brought to our attention? Two things influenced our decision:

The decision had to be made immediately. We had only two hours from when we found out about the material to when the project was ending. We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly.

Our processes, and everyday thinking, bias heavily toward creators. This is deeply ingrained. We feel a duty to our community — and our creators especially — to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project. This thinking made us miss the forest for the trees.

These factors don’t excuse our decision but we hope they add clarity to how we arrived at it.

Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter. If a project page contains hateful or abusive material we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect.

Where does this leave us?

First, there is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window.

Second, the project page has been removed from Kickstarter. The project has no place on our site. For transparency’s sake, a record of the page is cached here.

Third, we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately. This material encourages misogynistic behavior and is inconsistent with our mission of funding creative works. These things do not belong on Kickstarter.

Fourth, today Kickstarter will donate $25,000 to an anti-sexual violence organization called RAINN. It’s an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged.

We take our role as Kickstarter’s stewards very seriously. Kickstarter is one of the friendliest, most supportive places on the web and we’re committed to keeping it that way. We’re sorry for getting this so wrong.

Thank you,

Kickstarter

One can argue (endlessly, cuz INTERNET) as to weather or not 4 hours was enough time, or how the money should be handled, etc. etc. but none of that matters. The point is, Kicksarter does not have and had not earned a reputation for being a cesspool like Reddit is, they got thrown a curve ball, they fixed it. Good for them. Kickstarter is good.

Regarding the money getting through to the project, that is clearly irrelevant. Bad people gave some bad person some money to do something bad. We’ll see how that goes. It will be funny when it does not go as planned.

Anyway, good job Kickstarter and good job Internet for acting responsibly.

Photo Credit: sizeofguam via Compfight cc

UPDATE: ONLY PART OF HUMANITY SUCKS SEE THIS NEWS

OK, you may want some background.

A Reddit Regular, perhaps a Reddit celeb (or at least he is now) wants to write a book on how guys seduce women, and he’s asking for money on Kickstarter. One of his tips is this: You move in close, pull out your penis, take the woman’s hand and …. whatever.

I find it interesting that many commenters are referring to that as inappropriate, or sexual assault, by way of objecting to it. I’m pretty sure, though, that it is rape. Probably depends on the state. In any event, now that I’ve revealed one of Ken Hoinsky’s helpful tips for how to get women to like you, I’ll quickly add just in case you didn’t know: Guys, don’t do that. Just. Don’t. Do. That. Don’t.

The book rape-apologist and redditor Ken Hoinsky intends to “write” is mostly going to consist of previously written garbage he’ll steal from the Reddit “Seduction” community. Clearly, Hoinsky is a loser of the lowest level if that’s all he’s go. Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v, give me money.

Here’s a question that is being asked: Why does Kickstarter allow projects that are basically rape handbooks? And why should anybody ever even visit the Kickstarter site, or give any money to any project of any kind, or take any of your projects to Kickstarter, as long as they Kickstarter is run by boneheaded idiots who think this monstrous project is OK?

Here’s a petition you can sign to tell the Kickstarter CEO to do the right thing.

Here’s the story in more detail.