7 ms·

The Kickstarter Culture Wars

88 points by replicatorblog 13y ago

dnautics 13y ago
Well, the glowing plant group claimed "radical openness" - "will be sharing online all of the work we are doing - the ups as well as the downs." http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit/posts/469999 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... It's been backed for two months so far, and not much progress has been posted on the glowingplant website So either they are failing in their promise to be open, or not actually doing any work.
- angersock 13y ago
  "Day 55: Spent time in lab running gels--again. No results--again. FML."
  - TheLegace 13y ago
    Ya my girlfriend who is in neuroscience would tell me everyday about dumb people in her lab ruining her gels, which means having to wait hours more for the next one. She says she's never working in a lab again, even though she was very good at it. Her supervisor/superiors want to take her results. Her peers won't share or collaborate with her. And there are barely any online resources to really optimize/enhance her work and make her life easier.
    - voltagex_ 13y ago
      Sounds like every bad office.
angersock 13y ago
Is anyone aware of a well-articulated reasoning published by Kickstarter for this decision? It really does seem quite silly to arbitrarily disallow GMOs as something not worth funding, especially given that we've been doing it in one form or another for millenia. EDIT: Clarified by a response, apparently they're only disallowing GMO rewards, not projects.
- dnautics 13y ago
  It's their choice... It's one out of ten-odd prohibitions on their website. In the end people working on GMOs are free to use other crowdfunders or roll their own (like I will). Kick starter isn't an entitlement
  - zhemao 13y ago
    That number is a bit disingenuous, since some of the individual bullet points are pretty catch-all. For instance, No bath, beauty, and cosmetic products; electronic surveillance equipment; eyewear (sunglasses, prescription glasses, and others); firearms, weapons, knives, weapon accessories, and replicas of weapons; medical, health, safety, and personal care products; or infomercial-type products. That's a lot of mostly unrelated things.
    - dnautics 13y ago
      Indeed. I meant for 10 to look large, not small. So, yes, kickstarter has its own reasons for banning various things; and just throw another one onto the heap. They don't bother explaining why these are banned, so why the double standard with GMOs? Actually - all of these things have in common that they're regulated and I think kickstarter doesn't want to run afoul of penalties from regulatory breach or incur regulatory costs or burdens. To a certain degree (region dependent, use-dependent, etc) GMOs are the same way. Arabidopsis is a weed, but you can eat it. Anecdotally, it's quite tasty.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  But they are not disallowing GMO projects. You just can't give out any GMO rewards. I still think it is a stupid addition to the rules but I just wanted to make sure we understood what they are limiting.
  - jrkelly 13y ago
    As the article points out, the main driver of all the big kickstarter campaigns is a reward. So in large part this decision prevents GMO work from being funded.
jrkelly 13y ago
One of the big complaints about GMO plants is that the first generation were designed to meet the needs of industrial agriculture rather than consumers. Pesticide-resistance was added, not better taste. Now along comes a consumer-focused GMO plant and that is attacked too. It's very frustrating for those of us in the field.
- thomasahle 13y ago
  Why is it better to modify for taste than resistance?
  - bluedino 13y ago
    A major complaint about produce from mega farms is that they aren't grown for taste but pest-resistance or size or color. Since humans have tastebuds, taste is a pretty important factor and isn't considered.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      Why not also modify for nutrition?
      - sdm 13y ago
        You mean like Golden Rice? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice) The anti-GMO crowd seem to be anti-GMO for the sake of it, not because any rational reason.
        jrkelly 13y ago
        and a Golden Rice trial was recently destroyed (http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-destroy-golden-rice-field-trial http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-des...). It's not a great scene.
        mathattack 13y ago
voodoomagicman 13y ago
I just deleted my Kickstarter account and let them know that I will not be backing projects unless they change this policy. I urge others who care about science, the environment, and the human condition in general to do the same.
- dnautics 13y ago
  isn't this a bit extreme? I'm launching a science project that will use GMOs, and there will be other ways of crowdfunding. I was never in the position of using kickstarter from the outset... So this doesn't affect me, but I don't think it's really that much of a big deal. There are some really compelling projects on kickstarter, and your reaction seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
  - andrewcooke 13y ago
    christ. how many apologies can you make for the company in one thread? can't you give voodoomagicman a small fraction of the tolerance and respect you seem to have for kickstarter? for kickstarter, doing what they want is "their choice", but for anyone who decides to boycott in response it's "a bit extreme"? in your world do only commercial entities have free will?
    - dnautics 13y ago
      the "extreme" part is not vodoomagicman choosing to drop kickstarter. The extreme part is him exhorting others to do so as well. Kickstarter, as far as I know, has not exhorted other crowdfunding outfits to also reject GMO projects. Also, if I were in charge of kickstarter, I would not have made this decision.
      - andrewcooke 13y ago
        i respectfully suggest that kickstarter's actions will impact more people than vodoomagicman's.
CreRecombinase 13y ago
Are t-shirts now prohibited as rewards, as they are almost universally contain GMO cotton?
- anonymous 13y ago
  Only if the t-shirt is alive. They've disallowed alive genetically modified organisms, not their products or derivatives.
  - briandear 13y ago
    So kill the plant and that's ok, but the living plant isn't?
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Technically still not allowed: >Projects cannot resell items or offer rewards not produced by the project or its creator
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      I'm pretty sure that that doesn't require every input used in creating the reward to be created by the project or its creators, so a T-Shirt created with (dead) GMO cotton which was produced by (e.g., screen printed under contract for) the project would still be allowed, even if neither the cotton nor the ink was produced by the project.
jacquesm 13y ago
If you believe this is wrong then simply create a kickstarter competitor and let the market sort it out. After all there should be an opportunity there if they block certain reward structures.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  "simply create a kickstarter competitor" -- That is not a valid argument regardless of where you stand on the issue.
205guy 13y ago
I think the article is beating around the bush by calling this a "culture war" and stereotyping a lot of people as "techies," "hipster artists," "creatives," etc. Also, it really has nothing to do with whether the result is open sourced or not. GMOs have become a purely political issue. Originally, they were a scientific and technological issue, but then big corporations got a hold of it, captured the regulatory bodies, bought^H^H^H^H^H^Hlobbied some politicians, and sued people all the way to the supreme court. So now it's a question of whether you believe people and corps should be free to tinker with genes and release them into the wild based on self-made safety studies, or whether there should be more laws to regulate (or even ban) GMOs. So all the people threatening to quit Kickstarter over this are taking a political stand, whereas Kickstarter is more just trying to avoid the hot potato (GMO of course), just as they do with guns.
auggierose 13y ago
Culture Wars, like in Consider Phlebas?
bsbechtel 13y ago
Given the whole concept of Kickstarter is letting the crowd decide if a project is worth funding, it seems to me that in keeping with this mantra, they would be open to allowing any idea be opened up for funding. Not allowing GMOs as 'rewards' seems like a silly cop-out. Giving in to complaints such as this by the community sounds good in the short-term, but will be very bad in the long-term. It is basically saying, if you don't agree with our morals, you're not welcome on Kickstarter. This will open up the door for many other niche crowdfunding sites to support projects that Kickstarter doesn't allow, and will ultimately bring them more competition.
- dnautics 13y ago
  It's worthwhile thinking that maybe kickstarter is just CYA (CIA?). Imagine this scenario: a GMO project is backed by kickstarter. Someone takes the seeds to somewhere in a foreign country that kickstarter operates in where GMO is banned. A fuss is raised, lawsuits, kickstarter is fined big time by this operating country (or is forced to close shop).
  - bsbechtel 13y ago
    That's a good point. While the analogy isn't 100% correct, this seems similar to giving DMCA immunity to file sharing sites. They are just the enablers or pass-through agents, not the ones who commit the crimes. I'd be curious to know what laws actually could apply to this situation. Regardless, you can't innovate by not taking risks and having a cover your a attitude. If you don't take the risks, your competitor will, and if those risks pan out for your competitor, you'll go out of business anyway.
doubledub 13y ago
Seems like a genetically modified artist is the solution.
swamp40 13y ago
I think this article is spot-on. Don't get too hung up on the genetically modified stuff - that is just being used as an example. The technologists are slowly moving to IndieGoGo. Scanadu, Kreyos, Canary, Ubuntu Edge - all recent IndieGoGo campaigns that went well over $1M. Kickstarter's "No product simulations" and "can only buy one" rules are chasing technologists away. And I don't think Kickstarter cares. IndieGogo's largest problem now is that business owners are still terrified Paypal will randomly decide to keep all their money (1). If I was Indiegogo, I would move over to Amazon Payments and be done with it. (1) http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/14/glassup-raised-100k-on-indiegogo-but-paypal-is-refusing-to-pay-up/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/14/glassup-raised-100k-on-ind...
- wmf 13y ago
  Given PayPal's well-known anti-preorder policies, why did Indiegogo ever use them?
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  This doesn't change the thrust of your argument, but PayPal has released the funds. "Indiegogo’s head of marketing communications, Shannon Swallow, confirmed that Indiegogo had talked to PayPal “indirectly” about GlassUp and said this morning “everything is good.” Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/15/paypal-releasing-glassups-indiegogo-crowdfunding-money/#hp3LU59Cys7cJSPD.99 http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/15/paypal-releasing-glassups-...
- nl 13y ago
  I believe Amazon Payments cannot be used to pay people outside the US. My understanding is that IndieGoGo initially picked up a lot of momentum from non-US based projects merely by offering a non-Amazon Payments based alternative.
  - brodo 13y ago
    Amazon Payments now works in some countries outside the US. I don't know since when though.

Well, the glowing plant group claimed "radical openness" - "will be sharing online all of the work we are doing - the ups as well as the downs." http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit/posts/469999 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... It's been backed for two months so far, and not much progress has been posted on the glowingplant website So either they are failing in their promise to be open, or not actually doing any work.

angersock 13y ago
"Day 55: Spent time in lab running gels--again. No results--again. FML."
- TheLegace 13y ago
  Ya my girlfriend who is in neuroscience would tell me everyday about dumb people in her lab ruining her gels, which means having to wait hours more for the next one. She says she's never working in a lab again, even though she was very good at it. Her supervisor/superiors want to take her results. Her peers won't share or collaborate with her. And there are barely any online resources to really optimize/enhance her work and make her life easier.
  - voltagex_ 13y ago
    Sounds like every bad office.

angersock 13y ago

Is anyone aware of a well-articulated reasoning published by Kickstarter for this decision? It really does seem quite silly to arbitrarily disallow GMOs as something not worth funding, especially given that we've been doing it in one form or another for millenia. EDIT: Clarified by a response, apparently they're only disallowing GMO rewards, not projects.

dnautics 13y ago
It's their choice... It's one out of ten-odd prohibitions on their website. In the end people working on GMOs are free to use other crowdfunders or roll their own (like I will). Kick starter isn't an entitlement
- zhemao 13y ago
  That number is a bit disingenuous, since some of the individual bullet points are pretty catch-all. For instance, No bath, beauty, and cosmetic products; electronic surveillance equipment; eyewear (sunglasses, prescription glasses, and others); firearms, weapons, knives, weapon accessories, and replicas of weapons; medical, health, safety, and personal care products; or infomercial-type products. That's a lot of mostly unrelated things.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    Indeed. I meant for 10 to look large, not small. So, yes, kickstarter has its own reasons for banning various things; and just throw another one onto the heap. They don't bother explaining why these are banned, so why the double standard with GMOs? Actually - all of these things have in common that they're regulated and I think kickstarter doesn't want to run afoul of penalties from regulatory breach or incur regulatory costs or burdens. To a certain degree (region dependent, use-dependent, etc) GMOs are the same way. Arabidopsis is a weed, but you can eat it. Anecdotally, it's quite tasty.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
But they are not disallowing GMO projects. You just can't give out any GMO rewards. I still think it is a stupid addition to the rules but I just wanted to make sure we understood what they are limiting.
- jrkelly 13y ago
  As the article points out, the main driver of all the big kickstarter campaigns is a reward. So in large part this decision prevents GMO work from being funded.

jrkelly 13y ago

One of the big complaints about GMO plants is that the first generation were designed to meet the needs of industrial agriculture rather than consumers. Pesticide-resistance was added, not better taste. Now along comes a consumer-focused GMO plant and that is attacked too. It's very frustrating for those of us in the field.

thomasahle 13y ago
Why is it better to modify for taste than resistance?
- bluedino 13y ago
  A major complaint about produce from mega farms is that they aren't grown for taste but pest-resistance or size or color. Since humans have tastebuds, taste is a pretty important factor and isn't considered.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Why not also modify for nutrition?
    - sdm 13y ago
      You mean like Golden Rice? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice) The anti-GMO crowd seem to be anti-GMO for the sake of it, not because any rational reason.
      - jrkelly 13y ago
        and a Golden Rice trial was recently destroyed (http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-destroy-golden-rice-field-trial http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-des...). It's not a great scene.
      - mathattack 13y ago

voodoomagicman 13y ago

I just deleted my Kickstarter account and let them know that I will not be backing projects unless they change this policy. I urge others who care about science, the environment, and the human condition in general to do the same.

dnautics 13y ago
isn't this a bit extreme? I'm launching a science project that will use GMOs, and there will be other ways of crowdfunding. I was never in the position of using kickstarter from the outset... So this doesn't affect me, but I don't think it's really that much of a big deal. There are some really compelling projects on kickstarter, and your reaction seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  christ. how many apologies can you make for the company in one thread? can't you give voodoomagicman a small fraction of the tolerance and respect you seem to have for kickstarter? for kickstarter, doing what they want is "their choice", but for anyone who decides to boycott in response it's "a bit extreme"? in your world do only commercial entities have free will?
  - dnautics 13y ago
    the "extreme" part is not vodoomagicman choosing to drop kickstarter. The extreme part is him exhorting others to do so as well. Kickstarter, as far as I know, has not exhorted other crowdfunding outfits to also reject GMO projects. Also, if I were in charge of kickstarter, I would not have made this decision.
    - andrewcooke 13y ago
      i respectfully suggest that kickstarter's actions will impact more people than vodoomagicman's.

CreRecombinase 13y ago

Are t-shirts now prohibited as rewards, as they are almost universally contain GMO cotton?

anonymous 13y ago
Only if the t-shirt is alive. They've disallowed alive genetically modified organisms, not their products or derivatives.
- briandear 13y ago
  So kill the plant and that's ok, but the living plant isn't?
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Technically still not allowed: >Projects cannot resell items or offer rewards not produced by the project or its creator
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure that that doesn't require every input used in creating the reward to be created by the project or its creators, so a T-Shirt created with (dead) GMO cotton which was produced by (e.g., screen printed under contract for) the project would still be allowed, even if neither the cotton nor the ink was produced by the project.

jacquesm 13y ago

If you believe this is wrong then simply create a kickstarter competitor and let the market sort it out. After all there should be an opportunity there if they block certain reward structures.

jonathanjaeger 13y ago
"simply create a kickstarter competitor" -- That is not a valid argument regardless of where you stand on the issue.

205guy 13y ago

I think the article is beating around the bush by calling this a "culture war" and stereotyping a lot of people as "techies," "hipster artists," "creatives," etc. Also, it really has nothing to do with whether the result is open sourced or not. GMOs have become a purely political issue. Originally, they were a scientific and technological issue, but then big corporations got a hold of it, captured the regulatory bodies, bought^H^H^H^H^H^Hlobbied some politicians, and sued people all the way to the supreme court. So now it's a question of whether you believe people and corps should be free to tinker with genes and release them into the wild based on self-made safety studies, or whether there should be more laws to regulate (or even ban) GMOs. So all the people threatening to quit Kickstarter over this are taking a political stand, whereas Kickstarter is more just trying to avoid the hot potato (GMO of course), just as they do with guns.

auggierose 13y ago

Culture Wars, like in Consider Phlebas?

bsbechtel 13y ago

Given the whole concept of Kickstarter is letting the crowd decide if a project is worth funding, it seems to me that in keeping with this mantra, they would be open to allowing any idea be opened up for funding. Not allowing GMOs as 'rewards' seems like a silly cop-out. Giving in to complaints such as this by the community sounds good in the short-term, but will be very bad in the long-term. It is basically saying, if you don't agree with our morals, you're not welcome on Kickstarter. This will open up the door for many other niche crowdfunding sites to support projects that Kickstarter doesn't allow, and will ultimately bring them more competition.

dnautics 13y ago
It's worthwhile thinking that maybe kickstarter is just CYA (CIA?). Imagine this scenario: a GMO project is backed by kickstarter. Someone takes the seeds to somewhere in a foreign country that kickstarter operates in where GMO is banned. A fuss is raised, lawsuits, kickstarter is fined big time by this operating country (or is forced to close shop).
- bsbechtel 13y ago
  That's a good point. While the analogy isn't 100% correct, this seems similar to giving DMCA immunity to file sharing sites. They are just the enablers or pass-through agents, not the ones who commit the crimes. I'd be curious to know what laws actually could apply to this situation. Regardless, you can't innovate by not taking risks and having a cover your a attitude. If you don't take the risks, your competitor will, and if those risks pan out for your competitor, you'll go out of business anyway.

doubledub 13y ago

Seems like a genetically modified artist is the solution.

swamp40 13y ago

I think this article is spot-on. Don't get too hung up on the genetically modified stuff - that is just being used as an example. The technologists are slowly moving to IndieGoGo. Scanadu, Kreyos, Canary, Ubuntu Edge - all recent IndieGoGo campaigns that went well over $1M. Kickstarter's "No product simulations" and "can only buy one" rules are chasing technologists away. And I don't think Kickstarter cares. IndieGogo's largest problem now is that business owners are still terrified Paypal will randomly decide to keep all their money (1). If I was Indiegogo, I would move over to Amazon Payments and be done with it. (1) http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/14/glassup-raised-100k-on-indiegogo-but-paypal-is-refusing-to-pay-up/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/14/glassup-raised-100k-on-ind...

wmf 13y ago
Given PayPal's well-known anti-preorder policies, why did Indiegogo ever use them?
RougeFemme 13y ago
This doesn't change the thrust of your argument, but PayPal has released the funds. "Indiegogo’s head of marketing communications, Shannon Swallow, confirmed that Indiegogo had talked to PayPal “indirectly” about GlassUp and said this morning “everything is good.” Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/15/paypal-releasing-glassups-indiegogo-crowdfunding-money/#hp3LU59Cys7cJSPD.99 http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/15/paypal-releasing-glassups-...
nl 13y ago
I believe Amazon Payments cannot be used to pay people outside the US. My understanding is that IndieGoGo initially picked up a lot of momentum from non-US based projects merely by offering a non-Amazon Payments based alternative.
- brodo 13y ago
  Amazon Payments now works in some countries outside the US. I don't know since when though.