Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked 382
An anonymous reader writes "Rachel Marone has been a victim of cyberstalking for over 10 years. In 2011, she had a project on Kickstarter shut down because of the high volume of spam posted by the stalker in the comment section of the project. Recently, Marone's manager spoke to Kickstarter again to see how she could avoid having a new project banned if the cyberstalker showed up again. They replied, 'If there is any chance that Rachel will receive spam from a stalker on her project, she should not create one. We simply cannot allow a project to become a forum for rampant spam, as her past project became. If this happens again, we will need to discard the project and permanently suspend Rachel's account.' On her website, Marone sums up the situation thus: 'I am being told that I cannot crowdfund because I am a stalking victim. ... With so many women being stalking targets this does not seem reasonable to me.'"
With all due respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
While I hate to resort to tit-for-tat tactics, the obvious answer here is to spam all the founders' accounts.
Because, quite simply, that's 100% undiluted B.S.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
kickstarter - run by brogrammers? (Score:2, Insightful)
the inability to comprehend the situation and the lack of enthusiasm in dealing with it in a forthright and efficient manner speaks volumes about kickstarters management culture. they sound like a bunch of incompetent buffoons.
Re:typical female rational (Score:5, Insightful)
"i represent an unbearable burden on some system and am upset that they won't accomidate me"
You're an idiot and should be kicked in the nuts.
What does being a woman have to with it? (Score:0, Insightful)
Is this the feminist version of the "think of the children" cry?
Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First they came for the women (Score:5, Insightful)
People who avoid victims because they don't want to deal with the fallout are the worst kind of cowards. And in your hypothetical situation the answer is easy - just like in this situation with kickstarter.
What the people running the service have done is send a world wide message that anyone can control their service by destroying projects at will.
Of course they will back track very soon. They'll have to, but the mind reels trying to figure out how they did not see this correctly in the first place.
Interesting: marketing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now she got Slashdotted too.
Isn't that interesting?
Looking at her websites and everything, she looks like one of those artsy people that would benefit incredibly from exposure. Actually, anyone doing any sort of business on the net needs exposure to get noticed.
Over the last decade, I've become extremely cynical about things like this.
If she were really getting threats and people were posting illegal things like child pornography as she said, then the cops would be involved to go after this guy and take him out. But no. Things are continuing for some reason and here she is getting all this free publicity and hits on her website.
Read up on any of the "Gorilla Marketing" [amazon.com] type of books out there and you too will become cynical of any sort of public exposure.
From her website:
In my How Facebook Deleted My Ass article I discussed how my account was deleted because I was accused of impersonating myself.
. I don't consider FB to be that credible either, but then again, I wonder what made them come to that conclusion?
And if she is in fact truly being stalked, I blame the marketing people of the World for making public exposure of any sort a cheap way to market products, services, people, art, etc ...
After all, we do live in a World where people actually burn themselves to death to bring attention to issues. [usatoday.com] What's a little cyber-stalking?
Re:With all due respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why must there be comments? (Score:4, Insightful)
I could see allowing comments as a way of giving accountability to projects. If, for example, someone failed to deliver on a project, being able to comment would be very helpful.
It's her own fault (Score:3, Insightful)
While I think that Kickstarter could have handled it better; read the article on her website.
She got spam comments and she replied to them. She claims that she was being stalked and she recognised the stalker: why reply ? Just report them. You're not supposed to feed trolls.
It is clear the reason she got kicked off because she got interacted with the spammer and was part of the problem.
And WTF is a "transmedia artist" ? She uses various media, multimedia ?
Re:typical female rational (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how "typical"/common-to-type, but I too smell a whiner. 10 years of cyberstalking isn't harassment, it is symbiosis. "Co-dependency" in PC-speak. I find it beyond incredible that a computer-savvy person would be stalked that long without identification and intervention by law enforcement.
OTOH, any site that complains of spamming needs to require registration or grow a pair. The cost of allowing anon is some spam tolerence, or filters of some sort. Banning positive contributors (is she?) enters the death spiral -- rewarding bad behaviour.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to live in this world anymore. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's really true I'm sure 4chan and gang might have a fun time shutting down ALL the kickstarter projects.
Re:Interesting: marketing. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really #1 question mark that pops up upon reading the story. Why is she not going to police with this? If it's such a clear cut case of long term stalking as she claims, it should be a no brainer to get police to look into it.
This has a strong whiff of publicity stunt. She claims he's openly sending child pornography to multiple people and that "police/FBI won't investigate". Now I don't know where she lives, but considering current hysteria in the West about child pornography, I find this very hard to believe.
Also, reading the stuff on the other site, she appears to actively engage in conversations with this stalker on her own. Very strange considering that police would recommend to not engage in any contact with such a stalker.
This stinks of something big and important to the whole picture is being intentionally obfuscated by complaining party.
Re:First they came for the women (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to be an ass, but that's a natural survival instinct. You don't get into the fight between people you don't know unless you see with absolute certainty that one is a victim. And even then, things are often not as they would seem from the first glance.
That's what police is for in modern society. If you can stop the immediate fight, do it, but get authorities involved. Not yourself. Which is what the site in question did, it stopped the immediate fight by banning the account and informed the known active party (note that she actively participated in those spam threads) that this behaviour will be stopped and that she should not engage in it again if she doesn't want that fight being stopped by banning again.
I honestly don't see anything done wrong. Sure, if it's really as bad as the woman says, it's terrible for her and she should go to the police and really file a complaint with copies of "child porn and infant rape fantasies" she claims she's being sent. But it's not other people's job to take significant commercial losses because she chooses to take the fight to their shop. They also have a right to conduct business without such fights
Re:typical female rational (Score:5, Insightful)
She makes claims that "police say he's too good for them and FBI won't investigate". Something I personally find very hard to believe considering she's claiming that he's systemically sending "her and hundreds of other victims child porn and infant rape fantasies".
Someone who doesn't fuck up when massively sending crap like that to hundreds of recipients for a decade? That's inhuman. And on top of the cake, her letters with the moderators clearly state that she actively talked to this stalker on their site.
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be the best option. If you show how easy the system is to abuse, they'll have no choice but to change the system.
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the person was using the link to send the project creator a message directly, yes.
Personally I don't see why that link even exists.
But all comments on the comment pages and in project updates can only be placed by backers. You can only become a backer by pledging at least $1. Payment is processed through Amazon, which uses credit cards.
Now, would this really deter a determined stalker? No, probably not. But at some point, buying $10 throw-away credit cards each time you'd get booted off has got to become tedious, and expensive, at some point and certainly puts up a barrier.
Regardless, KickStarter is probably in a difficult position with this - they already can't check every single project in detail (the ones that collect $3M get a one-on-one webcam session, of course), so imagine if they'd have to verify claims about messages they get.
That said - I highly doubt there was so much 'spam' that KickStarter had to intervene. Their system handles hundreds if not thousands of messages, status updates, pledges, etc. etc. every hour.
Re:Interesting: marketing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ten years of "child porn and infant rape fantasies to hundreds of victims", and police "they tried and found no trails, he's too good we won't investigate"?
Are you really that naive?
Re:The solution is simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't want her having her lovers' spat in their comment sections, assuming the other account isn't just her, trying to drum up attention by faking a stalker and then breaking enough Kickstarter rules by "fighting back" that she can get banned and then run to Reditt and Slashdot within seconds.
Re:First they came for the women (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:With all due respect... (Score:1, Insightful)
Before going off on a rant, look at the person in question. Suspect fraud, no product, lots of complaints from donors of the first project, and always seeking personal exposure. Hmmm.
Re:Interesting: marketing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Restraining orders can be served in absentia if the party who is to be served is actively avoiding being served and the judge believes that. When the restraining order is broken, they'll arrest them, serve them with the restraining order, and if the infraction wasn't too severe, let them off with a warning since they weren't served before. If what they were doing was illegal anyway even without the retraining order, they'll be held in violation of it even though they didn't know about it.
Re:First they came for the women (Score:2, Insightful)
With an average [statemaster.com] death rate compared with other states, the Castle Doctrine doesn't appear to be making much of difference.
Nice law though - invite someone into your home, and blow their head off. Claim they had broken in. Profit!
Texas has a stand-your-ground law, like the one involving the Trayvon case.
No need to invite anyone into your house. Just follow them around while talking
to 911, then approach them, then realize you're getting your ass beat, then shoot
them and claim it was self-defense.
-AI
Btw, I am NOT against Castle or Stand your ground... but I am against dumb
asses causing so much politically charged news cause they couldn't mind their
own damn business, or at least couldn't bring themselves to act as a proxy and
eyes for law enforcement without taking physical actions.
Re:With all due respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny world this is turning into where Anon is the solution and the cause of many problems. But I'd rather have a chaotic-neutral internet overlord than the lawful-evil corporate Lordship that uses the law to strangle us.
Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't understand why Kickstarter would hold the project manager accountable for comments posted by backers, but not give the manager the ability to do anything about those comments.
Kickstarter's original complaint was that she was feeding the trolls, not that the trolls were showing up. As far as I can see, Kickstarter wanted rid of her because she was stirring up trouble, or because they were worried about the complaints coming in about a previous project. The last thing they want to do is put something in writing that is legally actionable, so they just default to the Ts & Cs in a vague way. As a course of action, it's time-tested and legally sound.
She's got mental problems (Score:3, Insightful)